Infantile Show and Tell Homilies Reveal the Intellectual Barrenness of the Clergy

Gus, the "visual aid", teaching 

and preaching to Catholics 

(because profundity would be

too confusing and dangerous).

St Ignatius Loyola said, "Hell's black legions are teeming; their harsh cry is heard". The duty of priests and deacons is to help their flocks have courage to face those black legions and fight back against them, therefore it's imperative that first the flock knows what good and evil are in order to even be able to engage in the battle. But at our parish the new deacon's "visual aid", Gus the Teddy Bear, addresses us on how to engage in fluffy stuff.

Let's say someone loses a child and goes to Mass to cry out to God for help and they get...Gus the Teddy Bear as a "visual aid" to help ease their pain. Or the fact that evil is all around us so we go to Mass for strength to fight against worldly wickedness and we get...Gus the Teddy Bear to prepare us for battle. Recently I overheard two conversations within minutes of each other. 

1st Conversation
MAN: Hey your hair looks great!
WOMAN: Thanks. I love it too. Your husband did it.

2nd Conversation
WOMAN: I see that the friend visiting you has left.
MAN: Yes. I'm sorry to see him go but he's on the way to California the see his daughter and her wife.

These are fleeting examples of everyday life in 2019...bits of conversations overheard on the run as people see and greet each other. Conversations that no one would have spoken aloud in public 10 years ago, much less 2 or 3 decades ago.

In February, 2019, the New York State passed infanticide into law thanks to liberal Catholic Democrats and no one blinked an eye. In Islamic countries the genocide of Christians continues unabated. Crime rises drastically every week in European countries with an influx of Muslim "migrants", 95% of whom are healthy young IPhone carrying Muslim males, yet Pope Francis cries that Europe must let in more Muslims, and no one says a word. On and on it goes. Why is this happening? 

My reaction (OMG!...literally)
when I saw Gus sitting
on the pulpit.

It's happening because those entrusted to preach and teach the Word of God to their flocks are lazy, infantile liberals dedicated to their progressive causes and not the cause of Our Lord. With evil surrounding us on all sides one would think priests and deacons would step up to the plate and do their consecrated duty by being witnesses to the Truth as Christ taught it.

But no. At our parish a Teddy bear named Gus, the new deacon's "visual aid", spoke to the problems of the day. At least I think he did. I was so outraged and busy tearing up my weekly contribution check that I truly didn't hear a word Gus the deacon said. Granted, I cannot afford much, but the parish won't get a cent from me with such innovations. That's how the free market works. (Deacon? As stated in your homily, you seem to be unhappy with the current economy. The economy has been booming for the past two years. Perhaps you think America should be reinvented in the Socialist image of Venezuela?) As he plopped Gus on top of the pulpit, the new deacon smugly stated that in his previous parish one of the priests disliked his stage props but admitted that he brought them in anyway! 

What could Gus the stuffed animal tell us that we didn't already know? Could he "advance us towards the true good of man ...or make us lapse into endless heathen wanderings?" (George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine) The deacon began his homily by saying that people walk out of the church before the end of Mass. That's a minor concern since what he should worry about is people walking out of the Church forever, never again to return. Catholics leave the Church because they're thoroughly disgusted. Trying to find God, they receive an old Teddy bear profanely placed on the pulpit and a tall pile of books in front of the altar as "visual aids". Not only did we have to endure the appalling "visual aid" of a stuffed animal profaning the pulpit where the only Word of God is to be placed, we had to endure the sight of the deacon kissing the bear on the top of its head as it left from our view just before the Eucharistic Prayer, which was good since fleetingly I thought that he might be thinking of giving that thing Holy Communion.

High five! We brought those backwater 

cold and recalcitrant Catholics up to our own 

level of insight...whatever it was.

The homily is the clergy's time to be used to teach the Faith, to lift our minds to God and Heaven. It should be about theology, God, Heaven, eternity, interpretation of the Sunday readings and Gospel. They should tell us things we don't already know.

For example, Mother's Day was the perfect day to talk about God's Holy Mother, Mary, but instead the pastor said in merely one or two sentences - after talking once more about the survey and changes he plans to make -  that it was Good Shepherd Sunday and that each parish is connected to a diocese, the diocese to the USCCB, the USCCB to Rome, the Holy Father and the universal Church. Simply everyone already knows that! Then he talked about pastoral needs during the actual time that it was his duty to be providing those same pastoral needs by preaching a homily about God. I have come to the conclusion that too many priests are lazy when it comes to their homilies. They rely on (liberal modernist) websites for homily references. 15 minutes and zip!...their homily is printed off the Internet, then they can relax and watch TV or go to someone's house for dinner.

In the past four months every homily at our parish has been about implementing the many changes the new pastor wants to make. Almost every Sunday the homily has been about the two page survey we were asked to fill out so that our opinion might be taken into consideration...and over and over about the new Mass schedule...and about how we are all a "team" on the same side. Do either the pastor or deacon realize that an actual team works for the same goals? 

The deacon Gus is exiled from reality 
in his Babylon of abstractions.

How can one be a participating "team member" when half the congregation doesn't believe anything the other half believes? Any Catholic Democrat sitting next to me in Mass votes for the evils of infanticide and homosexuality (remember, Christ would vote for the MORAL LAW, not wickedness) therefore I am most definitely not a "team member" with many people sitting around me in the pews merely because we are all Catholics. Clarifying this issue for us, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin said "If one is called to be Catholic, one follows what the Church teaches; that is the correct understanding of conscience (as upheld also by Vatican II). And if one really cannot follow what the Church teaches, then one's conscience requires that one leave the Church. That is the adult decision. One's conscience does not require that one makes up one's own personal religion and then pretend that it is Catholic."

Gus joins the Cappella Marciana.

Parish Survey Question 1-E asks, "What can (we) do differently to help you become more involved in the parish?" My answer to that is that the clergy can try not to drive people away by innovations, such as the pathetic Teddy bear stunt and the tall pile of books....as if no one else has books. People at our parish have books! I have books! My personal library has sections. They are: the Islam section, Irish section, China section, Russia section, an entire section on the Blessed Mother, Saints section, Biblical section, an entire section on the Gospel of John in Greek and English, Catholic documents and encyclicals section, Flannery O'Connor section, Dr Warren Carroll section, Padre Pio section, the section on St Therese of Lisieux, and sections by various Catholic writers, books written by Catholic friends, an entire section of Benedict XVI's books - both as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and as Benedict XVI, a big section of Catholic art books and many more sections. What is not in book form is bookmarked on my computer from the Internet which has an endless supply of solid Catholic information, as well as an endless supply of erroneous Catholic information by dissident Catholics. 

As for "visual aids", Catholics have many "visual aids" right in their own homes. Most all Catholics, except liberal ones whom I presume keep bears to look at, have a Crucifix in their home, a statue of Mary Most Holy, holy cards or statues and framed pictures of special saints. We Catholics here in the backwaters of Lake County near the Ocala National Forest do not need a Teddy bear and a pile of books as "visual aids". There are real bears here, sometimes in our back yards, and we have advanced astronomically beyond the Teddy bear stage of our spiritual lives and expect never again to be insulted with such tripe.

I myself have many "visual aids" in my home. I have crucifixes from Guatemala, a statue of the Blessed Mother from Quito, Ecuador - the Virgin of the Apocalypse which is Mary "with two wings of a great eagle" (Rev 12:14) literally dancing, although I like to think of it as stomping, on the devil. I have a wooden 2+ foot statue of St Michael the Archangel from Guatemala, although that one I bought here in America at the Shrine in Orlando. 

Gus, being super visual.

In my home are dozens of icons from Russia and Italy, Celtic crosses from Ireland, and other religious "visual aids" from across the planet. Every morning I wake up to a large "visual aid" of St Maria Goretti and the first prayer of the day is to ask her intercession for my children and grandchildren. Taped to her beautiful picture is a medal touched to her relics. Over my bed is a "visual aid" of St James Matamoros - which means St James the Moor-Killer (know thy history), and an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa and Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a "visual aid" of Rafaello's Guardian Angel, several Crucifix "visual aids" and four small wall hanging "visual aids" of the Holy Face of Jesus.  

I have walked through the great Cathedrals of Venice and Rome, France, Austria and Ireland, Cathedrals and churches in North and South America, visited the tomb of St Anthony of Padua and several saints in Rome and across Europe as well as the tomb of St Elizabeth Ann Seton in Maryland, St Peter of St Joseph of Betancur in Antigua Guatemala, and the place where the first American born martyr priest saint (to be) - Blessed Stanley Rother - was murdered in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala across the lake (Atitlan) surrounded by volcanoes at Panajachel...and many others in Ireland and Europe.

And that's merely just me. Simply dozens of Catholics at our parish have also traveled far and wide. Several have been on pilgrimages to Rome, Israel, Russia, Fatima, Lourdes, Ireland, Mexico City and other places. They are good and devout and knowledgeable, therefore have moved far beyond Teddy bears and a pile of the deacon's partially read books. 

Me, confronting the deacon.

They are not children and have vastly more life experiences than a three year-old nursery school child. Many have higher educations earning them university degrees for careers as doctors, lawyers, accountants, professors, pilots, dentists, architects, bankers, entrepreneurs, farmers, ranchers, skilled laborers. Some are poor without many worldly goods but with a yearning for God, not a silly stuffed bear profaning the pulpit where only Sacred Scripture is to be placed. We thought all that pathetic innovation silliness was over and done with from the bygone days of the 1970s.

I suggested that since they want change possibly we could change deacons. Find another one. Replace him. Find a newer one who is more up to date and in tune with the times. One who is a grown up, an adult able to teach us.

Normally I try to be charitable but after 20 irritating years with Fr "One Day There Will Be Women Priests", our parish was blessed for 4 sublime years with a young orthodox priest and another 4 beautiful years with another orthodox priest, but now we're right back to the 1970s of "change" and innovation, a Teddy bear "visual aid" profaning the pulpit, a tower of books in front of the altar and a deacon who seriously has never progressed beyond Show and Tell. Being charitable doesn't work with hard core liberals because they have already made up their minds.

In addition, the incessant incantations of "change" and "the survey" - as if what they are going to change is really what we the people in the pews want - is nothing more than liberal clergy trying to pull the wool over our eyes so that they can implement what they want under the guise of making us think we are the ones who want change. They will announce that as a result of the survey, the changes implemented are what we indicated we wanted. Meanwhile, not one of us wants a Teddy bear profaning the sanctuary and all of us have our own piles of books, ones that we have actually read.

To put it bluntly, the new deacon is "exiled from reality in his Babylon of abstractions" - George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, page 13.