Want To Bring Back The Nones? Bring Back The Eucharist
By SHAUN KENNEY
Remember those certain places that your parents told you never to go, but you did anyway? That’s Twitter…a place designed to share thoughts in 160 characters or less that has become a place where witticism and cutting remarks triumph over intellect and consideration.
Of course, given the concert between socialism and corporatism, it should come as no surprise that men such as Fr. Kevin M. Cusick — a contributor to The Wanderer — fell afoul of the powers that be. Fr. Cusick’s thought crime? Remarking that women should be modestly dressed inside a church.
Having just come from a part of the world where the penalty for wearing skirts that show ankles is death (or at the very least, the beating of one’s life), one finds the pearl clutching among so-called nones both exasperating and dull. Dress immodestly in front of the Western Wall or inside the Dome of the Rock and find out what happens; let’s see how many brave secular-minded Westerns have the courage of their convictions.
Ah, but culture! It’s different! We must be sensitive! Quite frankly, for a platform that consistently allows terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah to operate, where pornography abounds (if you look for it), where sock-puppetry — fake accounts used by one person to present the facade of popularity, directed against one person — is the norm, and where accounts are too often branded as “hateful” merely for quoting Scripture? Bah….
To wit, Live Action is currently banned by Pinterest. Their thought crime? Being pro-life, of course. When Project Veritas exposed the grift thanks to a whistleblower at Pinterest who said that staff labeled Live Action as pornography, Pinterest reacted…by firing the whistleblower. Not to be outdone, Twitter reacted by putting Project Veritas in the sin bin as well.
All the more reason why publications such as the one you are reading today are worth every dime of the expense. If we don’t maintain our own public square, there’s no reason to expect the world will grant us a fair hearing. They never have; they never will.
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Bishop Robert Barron at the USCCB Spring General Assembly remarks that over 50 percent of young Catholics who are catechized turn into “nones” — meaning non-religiously affiliated people.
Translation: They are hostile to a Catholic faith that is staffed full of frauds.
If there was one thing that I could hammer into the head of every priest, bishop, and cardinal in America, it is that the vast majority of the pew-sitting Catholics do not see them as friendly or practicing.
When was the last time a Roman collar went to jail protesting at an abortion clinic? When was the last time a priest thundered from the pulpit about the abortion center around the corner and then led a Eucharistic procession around the block calling for its closure — with the press ridiculing them and false parishioners threatening to stop donating? When was the last time the cardinals of the Catholic Church in America spoke with one unequivocal voice saying that any Catholic politicians who defend or vote in a manner that promotes abortion and the cheapening of human life will be automatically excommunicated and shall not present themselves to the Eucharist?
Show me the last time a cardinal of the Church wagged his finger in the face of the likes of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama scolding them for their opposition to the Magisterium of the Catholic faith the same way Pope John Paul II wagged his finger at a Nicaraguan liberation theologian in that now-iconic photograph?
Show me the last time the Catholic bishops chose to bleed in the public square? Religious freedom? We are losing badly and will continue to lose so long as we choose to believe nothing. Pro-life issues? Protestant leadership; Catholic foot soldiers. Immigration? Imagine if we spent as much time and energy creating safe harbor and security for young mothers.
Show me where the Catholic bishops have chosen to fulfill their vocations as shepherds. I’ll show you men such as Paprocki, Strickland, Tobin in Rhode Island, and Burke…but you will not find a McCarrick in their midst. Nor will you find the likes of Wuerl, Cupich, Tobin in New Jersey, or Gomez.
Want to know why you are losing the nones? We preach pro-life values and feeding the poor in the pulpit, yet spend the proceeds protecting pedophile priests and promoting contraception overseas. We talk about human dignity, yet hand out wads of cash in state legislatures hoping to run out the clock on the statute of limitations. Our flocks beg for priests, and we get administrators and fundraisers instead. Young Catholics look for holiness, Eucharistic adoration, and catechesis, and they get movie night, sleepovers, and “youth masses” from their CYOs.
We tried accommodating the world during the 1960s. The guitar and sandals wing of the Church assured us that if we sounded more like Bob Dylan, young people would come back. Problem was, we all knew what Bob Dylan sounded like…and our “music director” wasn’t Bob Dylan.
Want to bring back the nones? Bring back tradition, bring back liturgy, treat the Eucharist as if it really is the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Defend the Eucharist, even if it leads to embarrassment in the public square. Remember that the single positive commandment of God is to love one another and Christ loves us.
Chesterton used to pray for bold and stupid men to lead the Church. Proverbs teaches that the folly of God is superior to the wisdom of men. The answer is simple but it isn’t easy. After all, we don’t come to Mass for the music or the fellowship, we come for Christ.
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The Congregation for Catholic Doctrine issued a document condemning gender ideology during the so-called Pride Month of June. Color me rainbow colors, but I had always thought that pride goeth before the fall and so forth? Never mind all that…what is encouraging is to see that the Vatican really does take the postmodern threat seriously enough to call it out for what it is — a breath of fresh air that should certainly send cold shivers down the more political and left-leaning voices inside the Catholic hierarchy in America.
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Please remember to pray for George Cardinal Pell in Australia, who is suffering a white martyrdom behind bars on trumped-up charges, putatively relating to a sexual abuse scandal (with zero evidence to support the claims), but most likely related to Pell’s work reorganizing and auditing the Vatican Bank — otherwise known as the Institute for the Works of Religion.
Dig too deeply in certain matters, and you will find some people larger than governments. If there is any justice left in Australia, Pell should win his appeal. Whether or not Australia will see fit to restore Pell’s reputation remains dubious indeed.
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First Teachers encourages readers to submit their thoughts, views, opinions, and insights to the author directly, either via e-mail or by mail. Please send any correspondence to Shaun Kenney c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Road, Kents Store, VA 23084 or by e-mail to svk2cr@virginia.edu.
