A Leaven In The World… 2019: Voices Of Truth Silenced
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
In the year just concluded anyone with no actual experience of the Church, and with exposure limited to its portrayal on the Internet, would think truth and tradition are on the downturn.
The fact remains, however, that if you want to know the truth, virtual reality is probably the last place you should look.
I remember one interlocutor on Twitter telling me he was a “new Catholic” but had not yet been to Mass. I explained to him that this was not possible. In the current social reality, some Catholics think they are are free to practice their faith as they please, at least inside the church of their choice on Sunday morning. But the faith is not a do-it-yourself home hobby kit.
This illustrates an increasing problem, as more and more people huddle in dark basements, perhaps in their parents’ cellar, living in front of a glowing screen for many hours of the day, pursuing all their income garnering and spending activity. They tend to become comfortable doing little else.
Keeping the Lord’s Day holy each week is, by the Lord’s design, a communal proposition, requiring both priest and people. Even a paleo-Christian house church involved community, however small, with the host inviting the priest and fellow believers in for worship. The epidemic of solipsism enabled by a computer and modem has a corrosive effect on spiritual as well as psychological and mental health.
Years ago when blogging was new, a man living with his parents began to get leaks of information from a bishop or bureaucrat, locally or in Rome, as the legend went. As a result of his prescient prognostications, he began to get a reputation for having the inside scoop on episcopal appointments. Many bishops began to turn with increasing curiosity to his blog and later also to his Twitter account. But some observers have noticed an increasing liberal trend with this commentator.
This was another trend in 2019: Self-described Catholics with Twitter accounts bombarding bishops with complaints about orthodox and plainspoken priests, attempting to silence the truth, in particular with regard to sexual moral teaching. The powerful homosexual agenda with its deep-rooted entrenchment among renegade Catholics in media, academe, and Church bureaucracies, continues to flex its muscles.
The chilling effect was evident and will probably continue for some time as many bishops enable it by their silence, obedience to these malign forces, or, in some cases, their outright enabling and support of the sodomy lobby.
This campaign to “cleanse” public discussion of any voices opposing evil severely limits the value of using Twitter and other social media platforms. Don’t fail to also open the Catechism and read the full truth of Catholic teaching. Only in this way will inquiring believers discover that certain popular voices, some in Roman collars, quote only those portions of the Catechism that do not threaten their agenda to spread falsehood and sow confusion about the Church’s teaching on the truth about marriage and human sexuality.
A related matter to the issue of people living their lives on the Internet is copy-cat shootings, and these also in churches. If one glamorizes the Internet and the fame it seems to offer, evil can strongly beckon as a way to garner infamy. Violence, including shootings, in churches increased by 35 percent between 2014 and 2018.
One of the final big and tragic stories of 2019 was of a shooting in Texas church. The good news was that a good guy with a gun stopped the killer and decreased greatly the potential for more lives lost that day. We can pray that this experience will encourage more of our bishops to support concealed carry in churches to protect the vulnerable.
The story was a catalyst for discussion of a law in Texas and its potential implementation elsewhere after the dramatic demonstration that self-defense is common sense.
One of the most important developments of the last year was the addition of weekly Traditional Masses in many parishes. There was one notable story in National Catholic (sic) Reporter on increased efforts to replant it among younger priests and its popularity among younger families but, for the most part, this groundswell continues to be ignored by old “big” Catholic media.
A few bishops encourage the trend and their diocesan media are freer to cover the story as a result.
While in many places tradition continues to grow and flourish on the local level, many in leadership continue to sow confusion. The old bureaucratic structures on the national and Vatican level, with so many moles burrowing down among others to sow falsehoods and promote alien agendas remain in many cases. They continue to undermine moral teaching by using buzzwords that promise a false worldly peace at the expense of settled doctrine in matters of faith and morals.
Inclusivity, for example, does not help if the evil it ignores or encourages excludes a soul from Heaven on Judgment Day. The inclusivity God seeks and offers through the Church is eternal happiness, not temporary aggrandizement on the Internet with fellow travelers in evil.
A heretic in a Roman collar might have over a quarter of a million followers on Twitter and run a well-known magazine. But how many of those followers are Catholics who practice their faith and seek salvation in sincerity and truth? We will never know. The Devil has a heyday among those drunk upon worldly glamour and acclaim.
True believers, on the other hand, quietly and confidently seek the Kingdom of God through holiness in parish and family life perseveringly with the quiet joy and serenity which is its reward and a foretaste of eternal life.
Trading the delusion of salvation for the real thing is a deadly game with eternal consequences.
Have a blessed New Year AD 2020.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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