By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
I’m on my way to Mexico this week with a group of women for a retreat at Guadalupe where our Lady many years ago wiped out human sacrifice and pagan worship through her apparition to St. Juan Diego. The coming of Christianity to places around the world like Mexico and even our own land through such great supernatural interventions as on Tepeyac hill and through the work of countless missionaries is being undone. Where fealty to Mary and her Son our Lord brought reverence and respect for human life and the family, today there is increasing rejection of basic moral teaching.
As once family-friendly organizations like the Boy Scouts and institutions like our nation’s military fall like dominos before the advancing pagan agenda that calls evil good and good evil, we must stand stronger than ever before through prayer, sacrifice, and an effort to remain Christian and persevere in seeking our salvation and that of the whole world.
The Supreme Court decision in Obergefell redefining marriage for all 50 states continues to draw diverse reactions. Catholics and other Christians are trying to puzzle out how far their faith requires them to go in witnessing the truth if their jobs may be in jeopardy. This is a fraught question that will only be worked out in time, as some of our bishops urge us to engage in civil disobedience. How far can a Catholic go in preserving his or her livelihood while remaining faithful to non-negotiable matters of faith and morals such as are involved in the “legal” redefinition of marriage?
But many Catholics with nothing more to lose than friends on Facebook or social standing in their weekend cocktail circuit are falling for evil with much less at stake. They have confused love for God with love for the world. Human respect is their “god” and not Jesus Christ.
Following the Obergefell decision, I tweeted:
“It is not possible to receive Communion in a state of grace if one rejects Church moral teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman,” with a resulting 122 Retweets and 154 Favorites. I then shared that Tweet on Facebook to some mixed reaction.
A follower on Facebook reacted to the post with a question: “Where is our ability to disagree? I’m not trying to bait or cause a problem. If we support the Church’s moral teaching but separately secularly support the legal decision for non-Catholics, all is good, right?”
Nope. Disagree with Jesus? There’s no “room” to disagree with Jesus except in Hell. If you disagree with Him now you better get busy repenting and changing your mind!
Where do we get the idea that we can love others if we reject God’s salvation for them? Not from God. The confusion that regularly passes for sanity on the part of so many Christians and Catholics is evident in the widespread societal capitulation in the wake of the Obergefell decision of the nine-person Sanhedrin of Satan we call the Supreme Court of the United States.
To react with an immediate need to disagree with Church teaching means one is in love with the world and holding back from God. That will never be acceptable to God. No, to love others means that we never reject God’s plan of salvation for them even if they should do so themselves.
When others ask, “Is there room to disagree?” we say no, there is no room to disagree if one wants to go to Heaven. There is no room to disagree if we are to remain faithful to the truth about love, that we must never flag in our desire for the salvation of others. What is wrong for us is wrong for all.
If people ask us where we find the scriptural authority for requiring Catholics to teach others what they follow themselves in matters of faith and morals, which include the truth about marriage, we need only refer them to Christ’s condemnation of scandal.
“It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones.”
When Jesus condemns scandal by referring to the millstone, He is saying that we owe those who are weak the example of witness and right teaching. When we approve of calling sodomy by the name of marriage, we give approval to sin. If we are guilty for this reason of the punishment of the millstone, we are certainly not in a state of grace sufficient for worthy reception of Holy Communion.
As we travel to Mexico in pilgrimage, we will call upon the patroness of the Americas to intercede for this once-Christian land to return to God by rejecting human sacrifice through abortion of the innocent unborn in the womb and by ending the relentless attacks upon the family and the moral life which must undergird it.
Just as St. Juan Diego was sent by our Lady to bring the call of holiness to the Americas through renunciation of sin, so must we find in her the inspiration today to join together under her mantel and do so again for a nation in rapid self-destruction resulting from rejection of God.
Thank you for reading, and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at APriestLife.blogspot.com and mcitl.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitl.blogspot.com.)
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