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| How many of the iconoclasts are attacking the Church from within? |
Of course, none of this can surprise informed Catholics, but how many pewsitters are informed? Collapse of catechesis has dumbed down several generations who don’t recognize novelties as the magnitude 7.0 earthquakes they are. One can only hope that shell-shocked Catholics don’t abandon their crumbling churches, but get serious instead. How? The first thing necessary is to pinpoint the problem which philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand did in his 1967 book, Trojan Horse in the City of God. He decried the “dethronement of truth,” saying:
It is nevertheless a fact that in a given epoch certain ideals and intellectual attitudes attain an interpersonal, historical reality to such a degree that we can say they are “in the air.” They are alive; they color and form the spiritual climate of the age. This historical vitality may be restricted to certain countries; or it may be more universal, embracing an entire cultural orbit in a given historical moment.Shortly before his election as pope in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger echoed the same truth in a homily:
...allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of “doctrine,” seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.Is there a way out? Cardinal Ratzinger offered one. “We have another measure,” he said:
Denial of truth reached an apex when the “I and its whims” influenced disturbed souls to identify as one of hundreds of genders or even animals. The entire world embracing this insanity is, indeed, a crisis of truth.
The Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism....Adult and mature is a faith profoundly rooted in friendship with Christ. This friendship opens us to all that is good and gives us the measure to discern between what is true and what is false, between deceit and truth.
Amen! To know Christ is to know Truth itself. But to know anyone requires spending time - lots of time with them! We have to stop making excuses for our failure to pursue the spiritual life. If you have three hours to watch a football game, you have time to read Scripture and study the catechism. If you have fifteen hours a week to play games and surf the internet, you have time to read the lives of the saints and research compelling questions of the day – like the limits of obedience.
All our study and sharing needs to be done through prayer, especially begging the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We need wisdom and prudence to counsel at the right time with charity. And, perhaps more than any other virtue, we need fortitude/courage. Both the laity and the clergy have failed miserably in that respect.
Ralph Martin shares a troubling story in his book, A Church in Crisis. He was teaching a course on the stages of spiritual growth for thirty priests from all over the country when the situation of the sex abuse scandal came up:
When I suggested that the code of silence needed to be broken... the priests surprised me. “You can’t possibly understand as a layman what fear we live in.”....they told me that they were afraid of what their superiors could do to them if they spoke up....I told them I thought they needed an infusion of simple human courage and a good dose of fear of the Lord so they would fear God more than man....There is a culture of “cover-up,” of silence, of complacency, and quite frankly, of cowardice, that has deeply informed many of our priests and is operating strongly in forming future priests. There is an “infantilism” that has been bred in grown men, who are unable to relate...in a healthy way to authority. There is a tremendous fear of conflict.... People need to become accustomed to speaking the truth in love to one another and to those they serve and those they serve under.
The only way to address the faith-wrecking magisterium that has crawled out of the shadows to destroy the Church is with a bold charity that proclaims the truth. Will we be attacked and ridiculed? Of course. We need to pray for the spirit of the early martyrs. The choice will be the same as the apostles faced – to run away or to stand with Mary at the foot of the cross. Pray the rosary and seek the assistance of the angels that you may stand firm and hold your ground! And don’t forget to affirm your priests when they have the courage to speak the truth boldly and with charity!
That's where my article ended, but Ralph Martin isn't the only one expressing concern about the unhealthy silence breeded into the diocesan clergy. Fr. Jerry Pokorsky wrote about that specific element of silence years ago. He described how young seminarians were warned to keep their mouths shut in order to make it through seminary and get ordained. Those were the days when liberal gatekeepers, often out-of-habit nuns, were making sure no priests likely to teach Church truth about homosexuality, contraception, abortion, etc. would make it to ordination. Good-bye Good Men was the order of the day. Unfortunately, however, the brainwashing into silence often continued into the priesthood. Look at the few priests cancelled for orthodoxy versus the many who survive evil bishops by keeping their mouths shut. How different might things be if they all spoke the truth boldly and with charity? Bishops can't operate their dioceses without priests after all!
Recently, Fr. Pokorsky wrote another article on silence, this time lamenting The Silent Compliant Majority who are afraid to stand up to the woke agenda that is destroying our country. Many in the workplace are browbeaten into silence by woke CEOs who punish employees for refusing to jump on the abortion or same-sex marriage bandwagons. In the last two paragraphs of his article Father writes:
The bureaucratic revolutionary elites have revealed the tyranny of their moral relativism. Of course—as in the Soviet Union—not everyone is in the position to dissent in public. But the vocational freedom of celibates—priests and single men—give them a greater responsibility to push back. (They may find that even those strange flying monkeys celebrated when the Wicked Witch of the West melted.) Where are the fathers?
We could use old-fashioned male outrage to protect our daughters on university swim teams. Do not comply.
Where are the fathers indeed! And where is the outrage as children are surgically and chemically abused to further gender fluid insanity?
Destruction of fatherhood has always been the goal of tyrants because when you destroy natural fatherhood, you destroy belief in the fatherhood of God. And without God the rules can go up the chimney with the bodies. The attack on fatherhood is always an attack on God in the end. Because without God, Ruler of the universe, Big Brother can make himself God of the earth.
We are long past the time to push back boldly, both on the secular level and in the Church. The truth must be proclaimed, no matter the outcome. May God give us the strength and courage to act and do it with wisdom and prudence!
May Jesus Christ be praised as Lord of Lord and King of Kings!
One problem is that with broken relationships/marriages, the fathers may not have a say when their 'woke' partner wants to try to change the gender of his child. The fathers that are out there have little say in what happens.
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