Fr. Tom Collins On the USCCB: It Lacks Integrity and Degrades the Authentic Spirituality of the Faithful!

Editor's Note: Orthodox Catholics have exposed the evils at the USCCB for years. Through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development they fund pro-abortion and pro-contraceptive groups, as well as community organizers working to elect Democrats with their evil policies. They advance the sexualization of children and the LGBT agenda. What evils has the USCCB NOT enabled? I've said it before and I'll say it again -- they remind me of the wicked bureaucracy in C.S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength. We've seen the "hideous strength" of Google, Facebook, and Twitter as they marshal all their forces to elect a senile, evil man who's used public office for four decades to enrich himself and his family. And what do we get from the USCCB? Not much. Their staff have engage in calumny and slander, not to mention politicking, to promote their liberal ideals -- some while they worked at the USCCB and others after leaving. Look at all the former staff members shilling for Biden this election. Father Collins expresses the frustration many of us feel about that monster on 4th Street in D.C. May St. Michael the Archangel take his flaming sword to the place! 

The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] - WHO [World Health Organization] - CDC [Center for Disease Control] alliance has asserted that we must devastate the world’s economy and stop gathering for worship in order to avoid the possibility of a COVID-19 pandemic. This assertion has, by and large, received the unquestioning support of the USCCB [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] bureaucracy. This being the case, certain concerns have arisen among the faithful concerning other ways, in which the USCCB’s version of the Gospel seems to be guided more by leftist secularists than by the Magisterium of the Church.

Their response to the COVID-19 threat has resulted in a serious decrease in Church revenues, which has paralleled the decline in the number of people being allowed to participate at Sunday Mass. The cumulative effect of such a decline is now being felt by many Church institutions. But with Church policies continuing to deviate from Church doctrine in order to conform to secularist agendas, parishioners are now asking, “Why should I continue to contribute to the support of the Church?” After all, many bishops seem willing to concede that, while casinos, liquor stores and abortion clinics provide “essential services”, the Church in her worship does not. Sharing in the Eucharistic sacrifice is apparently not to be seen as essential for our eternal salvation. As bishops ask us to continue our monetary contributions to the Church, the faithful are thinking more deeply about their faith, including the following reflections.

1. Contributing to the support of the Church is indeed one of the precepts of the Church. But so is the obligation to participate at Mass each Sunday in order to fulfill the Third Commandment, “Keep holy the Lord’s Day”. For decades, though, the standard pastoral practice of the clergy has been to deny the seriousness of failing to fulfill this precept – reflected in the expectation that those returning should be welcomed to receive Holy Communion with no need for serious sincere repentance ratified in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. If failing to fulfill our obligations to participate at Mass is not that serious, why should the failure to contribute to the support of the Church be taken seriously? Likewise, with Catholics having a right to the sacraments, why should they have to pay to exercise that right? Paralleling the socialist thinking dominating the bureaucrats at the USCCB, the Mass and sacraments need to be viewed as entitlements, which the laity have a right to demand without cost from the hierarchy.

2. The USCCB has generally acquiesced to the alleged “right” of pro-aborticide Catholics, guided by their sin-seared consciences, to receive Holy Communion. Yet the support of aborticide requires that a person either supports murder or denies the humanity of pre-born babies. In the latter case, if a pre-born baby is not a person, then the person of Our Blessed Mother was not conceived without Original Sin, but merely hopped into a parasitic fetus after it was expelled from her mother’s body. Likewise, God the Son was not conceived in Mary’s womb, but merely hopped into a parasitic fetus, which was expelled from her womb. So the Creed must be wrong in asserting that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

3. The USCCB is also on record as condemning those, who enforce the laws that protect the sovereignty of our nation, as immoral and uncharitable. But if protecting our sovereignty by enforcing our immigration laws is wrong, what about those who are protecting the sovereignty of the Church by enforcing her immigration laws (e.g., RCIA, marriage tribunal, sacramental disciplines)? Are we failing to show hospitality by denying people the “right” to enter the Church on their own terms? And is a person who seeks to protect his/her bodily sovereignty from a rapist guilty of refusing to offer “hospitality” to a person, who is experiencing a “deeply felt need” to fulfill his/her sexual needs? In addition, it is worth noting that, for decades, bishops have acquiesced to various “family life curricula”, which teach that sexual gratification is a need, not merely a strong drive. Then again, such curricula have, for decades, made children more open to sexual experimentation – as well as to exploitation by sexual predators.

4. With Pope Francis abdicating his pastoral authority over Chinese Catholics to the Chinese Communist Party, and with Bishop Sanchez Sorondo at the Vatican asserting that Communist China best exemplifies the social doctrine of the Church, the following practices are apparently now to be emulated and imitated by faithful Catholics – forced abortions, suppression of freedom of religion and free speech, usury, vivisection and organ harvesting, genocide, human trafficking and slave labor. And since, in recent years, Vatican policies have increasingly treated the Chinese Communist Party as if its agenda is to be viewed as the source and the summit of the Church’s life, any future financial donations to the Church apparently should be made directly to the Chinese Communist Party. Why pay a middle man?

5. With the official Catholic press suppressing the breaking news of: 

a) clear evidence of criminal corruption contained on the hard drive of the laptop previously owned by Joe Biden’s son,  

b) FBI officials refusal to investigate this evidence and keeping its evidence away from the Justice Department and the American public,  

c) those same officials keeping exculpatory evidence on the hard drive away from President Trump during his impeachment trial and 

d) how those exposing the truth are routinely slandered by leftist politicians and the mainstream media (much as bishops for over half a century routinely slandered those who dared to report clergy sexual abuse), why should any faithful Catholic continue to subsidize those who lie and elide in order to promote the leftist agenda of desecration, perversion and resentment? After all, if the truth sets us free, why should we continue to support the efforts of those entrusted with the truth to suppress it for the sake of expediency and “politeness”?

God save us!

Fr. Thomas R. Collins

Hot Springs VA