With so many social, political, and religious institutions as it were, “flying apart at the seams,” many people today wonder just how bad things will get before they get any better. This implies, of course, there once was a time when things were better (or perhaps more accurately, better than they are now).
Last Sunday, this idea came to mind when my brother-in-law asked if things have ever been so bad in the Church. He cited the obvious signs of spiritual and moral decline: The pedophilia and Lavender Mafia scandal, the decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and the loss of faith and its practice especially among young adult Catholics. In his estimation, what was especially bothersome was the group of Catholic nuns who had protested the prior against Church teaching concerning abortion.
Having spent his work life in the corporate world, my brother-in-law asked, “Can’t they be fired?”
I responded that the nuns have already excommunicated themselves from the Church but it would take a bishop with some real guts—and he’d have to be the local Ordinary where the nuns resided—to recognize that officially. I surmised that wasn’t going to be likely.
“Why not?”, my brother-in-law asked.
“They have clearly crossed the line.” I responded: “If any bishop formally excommunicated a nun residing in his diocese who promoted abortion as if it were a sacrament, he’d be accused at a minimum of misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism. All that would do is fuel the ire of her supporters, especially if they weren’t Catholic. Then would come the inevitable protests. In the end, the bishop would have instigated a bloody mess.” Against the inevitable tide of what’s sure to be withering criticism, I further mused, most bishops would more than likely take to heart the aphorism, “Remain calm. This too shall pass.”
We then proceeded to discuss several eras in Church history when things were much, much worse and, in the retrospective that history provides, the direct answer to my brother-in-law’s question is “Yes, things have been very much worse.” However, there was one major difference in previous eras: Bishops were unwilling let things pass. Some, like Cyprian of Carthage and Thomas á Beckett of London—who represented the minority opinion among Catholics concerning Scripture and Church teaching—gave their lives for opposing those who contested the Church’s constant teaching regarding spiritual and moral matters. In some eras, the majority of Catholics acted like and were more akin to today’s orthodox Taliban and Isis warriors than the holy card image of Jesus’ disciples.
What counts in every era of Church history isn’t so much what people think or how people feel about Scripture and Church teaching. No, the only thing that matters is what both offer humanity as God’s revealed Word. This Word isn’t just a common or proper noun. No, it’s the inerrant and unchanging Truth…in contrast to the many errant truths people have embraced and found lacking for time immemorial.
Consider one of this era’s truths: “My body, my choice.” How many self-identifying “practicing Catholic” politicians, people in the pews, and yes, even religious sisters and brothers protest what Scripture and Church teaching have to say about human sexuality? Similar to my brother-in-law, many of their fellow Catholics are left scratching their heads wondering why such dissent isn’t being effectively countered by the nation’s hierarchy when Scripture and Church teaching have reminded us from time immemorial it’s “God’s body not my body, entrusted to me for a particular divine purpose that, when I fulfill it, will bring true happiness.”
God’s Word—the revealed Truth in its pure simplicity—has a way of turning upside-down and inside-out those this-worldly truths that arise periodically. It doesn’t matter what the majority may think or believe in any generation. In the end, what matters is that turning one’s back on God’s revealed Truth may make people happy...in the short run. But, in the long run, history consistently teaches that disobeying God’s revealed Truth leads to unhappiness and, ultimately, death.
Consider divorce. In the depths of one’s heart, what spouse is “happy” to go through a divorce? Even in this era of so-called “no-fault divorce”—when divorced spouses are supposed to be able to claim the divorce was “amicable” and they’re still “best of friends”—the simple truth is they once loved one another. At some point or another, one or both made the decision to allow the forces of this world to extinguish the fire of that divine love. Then, too, what child of parents who are in the process of or who have divorced is happy about this outcome? Who isn’t gob smacked when a child—whose parents have divorced—observes how wonderful it is to have four parents and receive double the number of gifts on Christmas and one’s birthday?
Once again, God’s Word—the revealed Truth in its pure simplicity—has a way of turning upside-down and inside-out those this-worldly truths that arise periodically. “What God has joined, man must not divide.” It’s as simple, straightforward, and crystal clear as that! How are people to learn about the reconciliation and healing of relationships among nations, in states, and in cities and towns if children don’t first learn it from their parents? Arguably, the greatest testimony adult children can witness to their parents’ commitment to love, honor, and obey each other all the days of their lives is when those children say “I don't know how they make it work, but they have!”
Consider abortion. Despite this generation’s belief and all the claims that women possess a “right” to abortion and their allies in the legal profession and courts have found a penumbra in the U.S. Constitution to support that position, there are not penumbras in God’s revealed Truth which allows for no such “right.” To abort a conceived child—whether using the so called “morning-after pill,” cervical dilation, curettage, and evacuation, or even a partial-birth abortion via a lethal injection into the fetal heart in utero before exsecting the infant’s brain and extracting it, then amputating the infant limb by limb to extract the torso more easily—is to terminate what is nothing other than human life in various stages of development. From the moment of conception, the science of DNA teaches it’s a human being in development. Interestingly and despite all protestations to the contrary, most of those “procedures” aren’t without pain to the infant as well as remorse and guilt for the infant’s mother. Priests are well-aware of this fact because of the many Catholic (and non-Catholic) mothers who have had abortions and have come to them seeking guidance, counsel, and forgiveness from God…oftentimes decades later. Each has identified the need for a kind of healing this world is incapable of giving and come to the place where that healing is freely available because the Church—certainly not all its ordained leaders—has been fearless in teaching God’s inerrant Word of Truth about the sanctity of life.
In every era, God’s revealed Truth—written into every human heart by its Author and then conveyed in Scripture and Church teaching—comes under attack by those self-styled intellectual élites who have determined they know infallibly what’s best for humanity. Preaching a new gospel promising the kind of happiness that will ameliorate the unhappiness that’s allegedly caused by adhering to Scripture and Church teaching, all that’s required of anyone is to push the mute button on one’s heart.
Really? That’s the answer?
Not adhering to the revealed Truth of God found in Scripture and Church teaching may bring transitory happiness. But it will come at a very great personal spiritual and moral cost to oneself and others as well. Anyone who has the temerity to preach anything other than this isn’t preaching God’s revealed Truth.
Consider contraception. As early as 1920 with the Church of England’s Lambeth Conference, the voices of this world promoted the use of unnatural forms of contraception. They promised the use of this “new science” would inevitably lead to greater marital satisfaction and bliss (thus, lower divorce rates), increase family planning and budgeting to provide for a family’s needs (thus, avoiding unwanted pregnancies), and improve the quality of both marriage and family life (thus, paving the way to a veritable Utopia in every household).
When Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, those voices raged and railed against him. Even the New York Times ran a now-infamous banner headline and half-page photo of the document’s cover. Why? Pope Paul VI stated the exact opposite of what many Catholics (and non-Catholics, too) wanted the Pope to state. All their optimism that the Pope would toss Scripture and Church teaching to the wind were dashed. Taking the wind out of their sales, he taught the use of unnatural forms of contraception would have four potentially deleterious consequences:
- It would open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. In the ensuing five decades, Pope Paul VI ended up being correct: The use of unnatural forms of contraception increased as did marital infidelity, divorce, drug use, juvenile delinquency in fatherless homes, and crime.
- Governments would force contraceptives upon married couples to limit the number of children. Again, Pope Paul VI ended up being correct: Since the 1960s, the governments of China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, India, Nigeria, New Zealand, Sweden, and Canada have implemented birth control policies or continue to use one to control for overpopulation or, in today’s language, to be “sustainable.” In the United States, the federal goverment funnels taxpayer money to organizations so that women can abort their children. The President has also recently issued an Executive Order making abortions accessible on federal property and transportation expenses to be paid by the federal goverment for women who have to cross state lines to access an abortion. Pope Paul VI was correct once again: The use of contraceptives has not lowered the incidence of abortion...just the opposite.
- There would be a loss of respect for women. When a woman exercises unnatural control over her natural cycle of fertility, it’s true that women are “liberated”—think of the “Women’s Liberation Movement”—to engage in sexual relations for the most part without the consequence of pregnancy. Conveniently overlooking Church teaching that all sexual relations outside of marriage are gravely sinful, women were now free to be equally as licentious as males allegedly had been! However, this choice also has the consequence of reducing women to the status of being mere instruments to satisfy a their own and a man’s sexual desires. The outcome? “Hookups” with little or no relationship of consequence and zero responsibility for one another as well as “partners” who are no longer due love, honor, and obedience as well as care, affection, and reverence. Six decades later, Pope Paul VI ended up being correct yet again: Unnatural contraceptive methods have proven to be a bust for not just for females but males as well!
- Pride would lead human beings to view themselves as the ultimate masters and mistresses of their nature with no limits beyond which they can trespass. Since the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, homosexuality has been normalized to the point that marriage has been redefined to include homosexuals, transsexuals are performing in drag for kindergartners and children in elementary schools, gender has been re-defined as an individual’s “choice of self-identity” (Google offers a menu of at least 83 different gender identities from which people can select, #83 being “fill in the blank” because there are genders yet to be identified), and transgenderism is grooming young people to accept if not live an ideology—in public, private, and yes, even Catholic schools—that they’re trapped inside the body of an alien sex. If the ideologues are preaching the truth, It’s all about accepting “otherness,” being “inclusive,” and honoring “diversity,” that is, what’s exterior (i.e., characteristics) rather than interior (i.e., character). Yet once again, Pope Paul VI has ended up being correct: Muting the volume button on their hearts, those promoting this ideology don’t want to hear and reject both Scripture and Church teaching: “In the beginning God created them male and female.” God didn’t create multiple genders nor did God create categories of human beings.
While some Catholics have called Pope Paul VI a “prophet” and the Church has proclaimed him a “Saint,” more than 75% of baptized Catholics in the United States continue to believe he was 100% wrongheaded in what they assert is his negative assessment of human nature and fear of human sexual self-expression. Not only that: The Church in Germany is in full revolt, its recent “Synodal Path” calling for the Church to change its “policies” regarding marriage, sexuality, and ordination. Both reject his conclusion that there are
…certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions—limits, let it be said, which no one, whether as a private individual or as a public authority, can lawfully exceed.
In every era, it takes faith to trust God’s revealed Truth as defined by Scripture and Church teaching and to exercise the obedience required to pattern one’s life upon it, albeit imperfectly because human beings are imperfect creatures not God. “Do this, in memory of me,” Jesus taught and it takes faith to do so precisely for the reason Scripture and Church teaching contradict most of what people across history have said will bring happiness.
In today’s epistle from the Letter to the Hebrews, we were told regarding Abraham:
By faith he received power to generate…for he thought that the One who had made the promise was trustworthy.
Trusting God’s Word, Abraham’s dream was fulfilled. But, for that to happen, Abraham first had to have a relationship with God—to experience that God was with him. Absent that relationship, evidenced in the way Abraham spoke with, negotiated with, listened to, and obeyed God, Abraham would not have trusted God’s Word and Abraham would not have fathered a great people.
Like Abraham, “WOKE” Catholics are also motivated by a dream, namely, fulfilling the purpose for which God created them to live in and of this world for God’s kingdom. But, if “WOKE” Catholics are to experience the fulfillment of this dream, they need to learn to trust God’s Word which presumes having a living relationship with God—to experience “Emmanuel,” namely, “God is with us”—by taking their cue from Abraham by speaking with, negotiating with, listening to, and obeying God’s revealed Truth.
Yet, it must be recalled, Abraham’s progeny didn’t listen to God as their father Abraham did and eventually their adversaries prevailed over them. For those progeny who did listen to God, however, “in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.”
In short, amid the cacophony of voices promoting happiness in this life by not having an abiding faith in God, many of Abraham’s progeny fell to the roadside—what in this era are “sleepy” Catholics—while the few, the very tiny minority of Abraham’s progeny—those who in this generation are striving to be “WOKE” Catholics—not only had a relationship with God and faith in God but also trusted in God’s revealed Truth by “offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.” In short, those who listened to God collaborated with and supported one another in living out an authentic faith in what had become an alien and hostile culture.
Sounds like the ideal of what a Catholic parish should be, no?
Today’s epistle reminds us that “faith” is “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” It’s living the dream for one’s life of which God is the Author and has inspired—for Abraham, the dream of fatherhood—and devoting oneself to its fulfillment even when it appears to go unfulfilled. For most human beings, faith means living a marriage and family that works, though dimly at times, if only because amply evidence each day suggests that neither yet approximates the Holy Family.
But, Jesus taught:
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
Animated by a vision of what God’s revealed Truth teaches, “WOKE” Catholics strive to keep in mind that they’re “on the way but not quite yet there.” Knowing their imperfection and fallibility, they see in Scripture and Church teaching a veritable treasure trove of authentic divine guidance—“money bags that do not wear out,” Jesus called it—which offer the pathway to true happiness—“an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy,” Jesus reminded his disciples.
Though challenging and difficult to achieve, to possess an abiding faith and to seek to live each day God’s revealed Truth in a hostile and alien culture isn’t an impossible goal to reach.
Consider the testimony of the “voice of the Dodgers,” Vin Scully, who died this past week at the age of 94. On a conference call just prior to the final game Scully was to announce, he was asked:
To what do you credit your longevity and popularity as a broadcaster?
Scully responded:
First of all, I attribute it to one thing and one thing only, God’s grace, to allow me to do what I've been doing for 67 years. To me, that’s really the story. Not really me, I’m just a vessel that was passed hand-to-hand, down through all those years. So, I don't take it to heart as some great compliment. I just realize that because I’ve been doing this for 67 years, that’s why everybody wants to talk about it. So, I think I’ve kept it in proper perspective.
That “perspective” was rooted in Scully’s abiding faith. Having experienced the death of his father when Scully was five years old, in 1994 the death of his wife of an accidental medical overdose as well as the death of his adult son, Michael, who died in a helicopter crash, and in 2021 the death of his second wife, Sandra, following a lengthy battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Scully said “faith is the one thing that makes it work, makes me keep going.”
Despite these hardships, Scully said his faith “has not wavered.”
That represents this week’s challenge from scripture: To identify that dream and devote ourselves to live out our Catholic faith despite the daily evidence that keeps cropping up that its promise won’t be fulfilled.
For those of who are married, to “do this, in memory of me” as Jesus taught requires taking a bit of time each day this week to conduct this memento mori: Contemplate the dream that animated you—what really motivated you in your heart—when you first fell in love, got married, and started a family. What led you to conclude during your courtship “This is the one God created to complement me in this life so I will experience that God is with me”?
Well, maybe not in those words, but you get the basic idea—how you concluded this was “the one”?
If that memory is a little fuzzy or even if it’s crystal clear, take out the photo album from you wedding and look at the pictures of your spouse on that very special day. What was it you saw?
When you feel that “spark” again in your heart—the dream and the hope it engenders—then it’s time to move onto the next element of this exercise: To contemplate your dream of being a parent.
To “do this, in memory of me” as Jesus taught, take out your family’s photo album and take a bit of time each day during this week to contemplate the pictures of your children—at their birth, baptism, school, confirmation, extracurricular activities, graduation, and their marriages. Allow these memories to rekindle that dream and its hopes…experiencing “Emmanuel,” namely, “God is with us.”
For those who are single—young or old doesn’t matter—to “do this, in memory of me” requires taking a bit of time each day this week to conduct this memento mori: Contemplate the dream that animated you—what really motivated you in your heart—when you first experienced yourself being truly happy because you did something good. Even though you could have done otherwise, you freely willed to do something good. As you reflect upon that experience, recall how you felt knowing you did something good.
Then, if you happen to have pictures of your baptism, first Holy Communion, and Confirmation available in a photo album, take a good close look at yourself. Allow those reflections to rekindle the dream and its hopes that you really are and really can be a good person in whom God dwells…experiencing “Emmanuel,” namely, “God is with us.”
For all of us, this week’s memento mori requires refocusing our desire for happiness away from seeking to discover it in all the alluring and attractive yet passing and transient things of this world. Focusing instead upon what animates our hearts—the purpose for which God has created us in this body, for this era, and in this place—the Holy Spirit will rekindle this dream and its divine fire will motivate each of us to become more “WOKE” Catholics who live a more authentic and abiding faith...like Abraham.
“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be,” Jesus said.
Animated by a vision of what God’s revealed Truth teaches, as “WOKE” Catholics we will be “on the way but not quite yet there.” We will learn to see in Scripture and Church teaching a veritable treasure trove of divine guidance—those “money bags that do not wear out”—that provide true happiness—that “inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.”
In this way and as today’s first reading reminded us, “..the holy children of the good offer sacrifice and put into effect with one accord the divine institution.”
“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,” Jesus said to his disciples, “for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.” All it takes is faith—faith in God’s revealed Truth that’s written into every human heart by its Author and conveyed in this generation through Scripture and Church teaching.
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