By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The world has become embroiled in the story of Charlie Gard, the British infant caught in the web of the National Health System, the bureaucrats of which have decided that he must be denied any further help and “allowed to die.” Any further efforts of doctors to aid him are seen as the cause of his suffering and so, in the bureaucrats’ view, all treatments are to be terminated.
His parents are desperate to help him in any way that they can, as parents should. The unique love that only they can offer as they advocate ceaselessly for him is inspirational. Many have come forward all over the world to sign petitions of support and to raise funds to realize the family’s desire to move Charlie, if need be, to get the care that may be the answer to his very serious illness.
The prospect of death panels, as a result, once again looms large in the public imagination. Nameless, faceless bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies while helpless family members look on from the sidelines is truly a horrifying possibility.
The socialist system in which Charlie Gard is caught survives in large part by keeping everyone corralled within the same restrictions on care. If anyone is permitted to become an exception to the rules of care and expense, the center is in danger of no longer holding.
The large sums raised by others both inside and outside of Britain to increase the safety net for Charlie have thus far left the health system bureaucrats unmoved and they have denied Charlie the freedom to travel for care, no matter that his parents can now pay for it on their own.
(This column was written before the UK judge, Mr. Justice Francis, agreed to hear new evidence in Charlie Gard’s case on Thursday, July 13, the day this issue of The Wanderer went to press.)
The injustice of denying Charlie’s parents the freedom to access alternative care has moved millions to support them, including Pope Francis and President Trump.
It is moving to see the heroism of Charlie’s parents who love him like no one else: simply because he is alive and procreated by God through them to love and to be loved. Every parent should be supported in answering this call to love every child as he or she deserves. In this way God’s own love is permitted to enter and to transform our world into a truly holy place where human dignity is championed and injustice stamped out.
Yes, health care is costly, in some cases cripplingly so, but in the end we must avoid placing a price tag on any human life lest we sin in doing so and lose our own souls in the process. No human being should ever be reduced to a mere line item in a budget.
In the Church we have faced a similar fate in the postconciliar period. An injustice has been committed in denying certain freedoms to God’s people in the name of an arbitrary conformity. The fate of millions was decided by a committee of dubious provenance, to say the least.
There is the “fake Vatican II,” as represented by characters such as Fr. James Martin, SJ, with their seductive promises of a “Gospel” allegedly permitting homosexual activity. The lure of a false Gospel continues to charm humanity which longs to claim God along with all of the choices of personal free will, both good and evil.
An example of the most dangerous kind of heresy, which Martin represents, is to quote the Catechism in part and remain silent in regard to the rest. Martin, in interviews, for example, thus repeats the portion of the Catechism’s teaching on homosexuality which says that “all discrimination in regard to such persons must be avoided.” He fails, however, to go on and to quote the full teaching which affirms that same-sex attraction is “disordered.”
Martin remains a popular source of confusion and an agent of opposition “psyops” on the big network TV talk show circuit. Perhaps intoxicated by his popularity via social networks and big book sales, he has perhaps been seduced into thinking he has finally struck on a true “Gospel” which will finally bring Christ to all, as it was always meant to be.
But, apart from the examples of “fake Vatican II” such as Martin, which are easily distinguished from the real one with a more thorough knowledge of the Catechism, there is another web of restriction on Catholic life.
For many years I went along with the tactic still adopted by many priests. A compromise begins to take form early on in a seminarian’s experience. He learns under the tutelage of pastors and formators to surrender the area of liturgy over to laity and liturgists as a kind of playground.
The man being trained to become a priest surrenders all decision-making ability in regard to what he learns in the classroom is the most important gift for which he will be ordained: the Holy Mass. Sure, he’ll get to pick out his vestments. But all the while his identity will be undermined by all the other characters on the “stage,” which the altar has now too often become.
In this scenario, laity get to believe that Vatican II style participation means taking over roles traditionally assigned to priests, or men in formation to become priests, such as serving and reading. “What harm could there be in it?” he is asked. “Can’t we all just get along?” The seminarian is rewarded with good reviews as a result of being cooperative and “working well with laity.” He gets through the system with flying colors and is happily ordained.
The young priest continues to tell himself, “Well, at least I can teach the orthodox faith. I still have the pulpit from which to teach uncompromisingly as the Church does in all regards.” He has bought into a system which compartmentalizes.
In this web one is permitted to speak the truth as much as one wants, perhaps accompanied at times by some eye-rolling, on the part even of other priests as well as laity. But the priest is never permitted to act with orthodoxy, to question whether Vatican II was truly implemented with the deformed and ever-manipulated liturgy, an amorphous canvas of perpetual variety to avoid boring an over-stimulated laity.
The Church has never taught only from the pages of a book, however, whether it be the Bible or the Catechism. As a matter of fact, the liturgy was and remains the primary moment of encounter with the truth, not just spoken but acted upon by those who represent Christ within its rituals.
We pray as we believe. Years of praying capriciously, without unity and, in some cases sacrilegiously, in the Mass has seen its result in the mess over the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The dubia of the four cardinals (RIP, Joachim Cardinal Meisner) remains a witness that all the time that our liturgy was left unguarded, our faith itself was under attack.
A closed system which denies us access to the truth about liturgy threatens to turn us all into spiritual Charlie Gards. The Traditional Latin Mass, freed once again by Benedict XVI ten years ago, promises liturgical freedom for teaching the truth in what the Church does as well as in what she says.
Injustice in matters of salvation does not threaten merely the fate of the body, as does a closed committee of secularist bureaucrats for whom the demands of God may be merely the figment of a child’s tale of fiction, but nothing less than the eternal soul.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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