By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The eyes of the world were trained upon Britain in these last days to witness the funeral and burial of Prince Philip. There are certainly those without much reserve of sentiment for the UK, given the legendary anti-Catholicism woven into the warp and weft of British life.
My interest in liturgy and ceremony drew my attention, at the same moment that free time while on vacation provided an opportunity to watch the obsequies.
The simplicity of the liturgy served to bring the Scripture readings and sacred music into sharper relief. The stark beauty of God’s Word and teaching, the truth of His Being and redeeming love, were palpable by means of the beauty of the sacred thus conferred upon humanity in Christ.
Philip’s unique life led to a witness close up of the importance of faith while under fire in the Second World War. His mother Princess Alice gave up her royal privileges and possessions to serve the poor in Greece and, for a time, did so as a woman religious in a Greek Orthodox order of her founding which did not survive.
As a friend observed, “In his last weeks, Philip demanded to be released from hospital so he could die at Windsor Castle. His mother is viewed as having revived her son’s faith in Christianity. Why this matters (in Great Britain anyway): Prince Philip was a tastemaker. Today, he’d be called an ‘influencer.’ Perhaps in a small way, his service will get Britons to examine their faith, or lack thereof. And to think on their own last days.”
Christ meets us in the sacred encounter which continues in the Church through liturgy and prayer, and finally at each funeral Mass. The Holy Mass is for us, and an unbelieving world, the perfect prayer of Christ and thus the perfect means of encounter with Him. The fact that the Eucharistic Lord becomes truly present by means of every Holy Mass perfectly makes the point.
We are under assault by vandals who claim to be Catholic and to be helping us while attempting to destroy the sacred even as they praise it.
When there’s a five-alarm fire, and the house is rapidly being consumed by the encroaching flames, one naturally keeps sounding the alarm until enough firefighters show up to put out the blaze.
I find myself writing so often about the same disasters in the Church because the conflagration is ongoing and building. Those in charge who are best equipped to save the house are pouring fuel on the flames.
Every week, it seems, Vatican flunkies or their cohorts find a new way to trivialize the Catholic faith or falsify it by twisting it into an unrecognizable and inscrutable mess. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Up is down and down is up.
Adultery is the same thing as marriage, we are led to believe, because we are instructed that the parties in both situations are to be indistinguishable at the Communion rail, according to Pope Francis and those allied with him in a certain interpretation of Amoris Laetitia.
LGBT is proclaimed a victim class while in reality it’s a privileged political lobby, very powerful with large funds at its disposal. But the fabulous myth that it’s a victim class is perpetuated.
Many leaders of the Church continue to mimic what the world says, betraying the essential irreplaceable mission of the Body of Christ.
The latest assault is a May conference at the Vatican, purportedly to promote health, at which infamous abortion advocates like Chelsea Clinton will further confirm the years-long leftist domination which has occurred under this papacy. If abortion is not health, and murder in fact is not, then this is a collection of very unhealthy poseurs.
As another example of problems, invitee Anthony Fauci is an apostate Catholic. And the speakers roster is ridiculously swollen in numbers at 114 — are there any faithful Catholics among them?
It’s as though the ramparts have been thrown down and the Catholic citadel has been invaded by every ideology that is contrary to Christ, the message of the Gospel and the strict moral life it requires. The plunderers will go back triumphant to the United States after their tax-deductible business trips to Rome and the Church in United States will bear the brunt of the damage as a result.
As most of the speakers are Americans, the event will be covered well by U.S. media, while the whole fiasco appears designed to continue to erode the sense of the faith in the United States.
“Brace for incoming,” as we used to say in Army training, to warn for imminent mortar round impact. They’re going to keep up this scorched earth policy until nothing recognizably Catholic remains.
Now, the priesthood appears to be in the sights of these destroyers of the sacred. An upcoming Vatican conference on the priesthood, an International Theological Symposium, “For a Fundamental Theology of Priesthood,” organized by the Congregation for Bishops, is to be held in Rome from February 17-19, 2022.
The organizers are attempting nothing less than a new paradigm, which language we’ve heard before. From the press release issued to announce the February conference:
“The sacred and the profane in Christianity are outdated categories because with Christ, God’s presence among us, the sacral religious model of the ancient religions is outdated. But the mystery remains. So the priest of Christ must evoke the mystery and transcendence of the liturgical act, for example, without trivializing the sacred, without sacralizing the profane. The theology of the sacraments and the liturgy is an area that must be re-proposed together with the theology of the priesthood.
“Thus the symposium will help to understand that the crisis of the identity of the priest or of vocations is not only a crisis affecting particular individuals but the ongoing transformation of the whole church as a body animated by the lymph of the Spirit, a living organism on the basis of faith that creates a profound harmony between the members, the head, the joints, a communion that from age to age must reaffirm an adequate physiognomy of the Kingdom.”
If the recent past is any indication, there will be virtually nothing sacred left when these agents of the profane are through. They have proven themselves to be the enemies of the sacred with the near banishment of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from St. Peter’s Basilica itself.
After we die, each of us will stand alone before God. The sacred which we have sought all our lives will thus come to our aid as evidence of our love for Him, arguing in favor of our salvation. Denying the incarnate sacred, by exalting the profane, silences the Christ-voice of conscience in this world which constantly calls us to prepare well for the next.
Thank you for reading. Praised be Jesus Christ now and forever. apriestlife.blogspot.com
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