By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
“Some say the Catholic Church has to become more like Protestants (e.g., married priests, women priests, abortion, gay marriage) to survive. A new ABC Poll shows that Protestant membership has declined 14 percent in the last 15 years! We Catholics had better look before we leap.”
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Diocese of Providence, R.I., shared this startling assessment via his Twitter account this month. What’s startling, though, is not what was said but who said it. Bishop Tobin has garnered increased attention on the social media platform for his uncharacteristic candor in a time when many bishops self-protectively hold their cards close to their chest.
Our distinctive Catholic identity is under attack not from without, which would be business as usual, but from within. A voice like that of Bishop Tobin is needed to shed light and guide the way in the darkness of confusion. With 421 Retweets and 1,700 Likes, his warning evidently resonated deeply.
It’s indeed a strange time to be a Catholic — even “weird.” Many outside the Church want her to give up her faith and morals based on the fads and trends of the current day. The Church follows, not a weather vane, but the cross of the Lord. The Savior on the Cross connects us with the Father while ever keeping His arms open in loving embrace of the world.
Many who over the centuries have misunderstood our faith and the signs of its devotion have called Catholics weird. But they have also borrowed from the Church the things we use to proclaim our faith, though not the faith itself. Witness the many non-Catholics who drape a rosary over their automobile rearview mirrors. They may never think of praying the rosary or learn how, but they want the feeling of being connected with God that the sacraments of the Church indeed provide, for which reality the sacramentals such as the rosary are mere signs.
I used the word “weird” to describe some of the more than strange dresses and garb worn at the Met Gala this month, the theme of which was “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”
Ross Douthat, in a subsequent New York Times column, used the word again, calling worldly interest in things Catholic a positive trend. He believes the fashionable reworking of what he called the weird things about Catholic devotion signals a potential for the faith to draw the wandering back to her fold through them. He believes the faith can be weird and great again if these things are used in our churches.
Raymond Arroyo blasted the Met Gala as a betrayal made more grave by the presence of Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York. The objects on display from the Vatican should also be used in our liturgies, Arroyo opined. When the beautiful things of our faith that attract the worldly are found only in museums, and cheap, plain mass-produced items in our churches, souls are less likely to find their way to Mass and to the salvation it makes possible.
Certain lobbies in the Church want these historic and liturgical treasures originally conceived for the worship of God to be permanently locked up in dusty museum display cases. This frees them to continue to deform the liturgy into a horizontal affair that glorifies man and forgets God. All the better to enable their heretical agendas which can never be compatible with the true faith.
The “gay lobby” in New York was definitely at work in what was a morally offensive and insulting context for the Vatican-loaned items, on display at the Metropolitan Museum for a few months this year.
One need only look into the biography of the man responsible for directing the project to ascertain this fact. Whether or not a “gay lobby” in Rome or at the Vatican also conspired in the betrayal is not certain.
What is certain is that Cardinal Dolan’s presence along with the presence of Fr. James Martin, SJ, has been a scandalous sign of approval for that which can never be approved. The offending objects in the exhibit that render it morally condemned cannot be described in a Catholic newspaper.
The fact that the boys in the Sistine Chapel choir, who sang for the opening night crowd, may have been exposed to these predations of the fashion world occasioned by the Vatican exhibit is not certain.
Yes, these are weird times in which to be Catholic, but not because of the Church and her art treasures. The world is weird because of its distance from God. God is not “weird,” but He is certainly far beyond our understanding.
The reason that Catholic customs and symbols keep coming back no matter how hard the world tries to dismiss them is that nobody has yet come up with a better way to declare that truth.
After more than 50 years of surviving the vandalizing influence of certain weird interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, a major Roman landmark has only recently fallen victim.
In just the past week, a Cranmer table, for facing the congregation while celebrating Holy Mass, was bolted to the floor of the Pantheon, blocking an unfettered view of the magnificent high altar used often for the traditional liturgy. In fear the vandals have violated the beauty and balance of another classic space. Such a symbolic “victory” in Rome belies the wider trend in the Church at large in which the tradition is reasserting itself.
Future generations will thank those among us for restoring sanity in the Church by keeping her treasures not in museums, but in our churches to be used for the greater glory of Almighty God and the salvation of souls.
The traditional liturgies of the Church are the moment in the daily life of the Body of Christ for which these beautiful things were created. The beauty of the life of faith flourishes where the traditional liturgy and traditional art are once again found in the symbiotic relationship which gave them birth.
Not weird, but wonderful.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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