By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Some things are worth defending.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man at 17 years of age, knows this fact quite well. He was forced to defend his own life because others threatened to take it away. Kyle is now, as of November 18, awaiting the verdict from his trial but, as is so often the case today, many are attempting to try and condemn him in the media. Defending one’s own life, for many, is now a crime.
Kyle was down on the ground, alone against a mob, his safety and, potentially his life, threatened. He used his weapon and killed his attackers in what appears to be self-defense.
I believe, now that he has the ignominious status of having killed men, he would be quick to correct any others who glamorize violence, who think such a regrettable tragedy confers some sort of “street cred” or hero status. Men who take the life of another as a defense never forget the gravity of the decision and are sobered by the reality for the rest of their lives.
Kyle no doubt demonstrated the sober reality of taking life when he broke down in dramatic sobs in the courtroom, reliving the tense moments before he had to use his weapon in the face of potentially deadly threats. Many have derided Kyle as a wild and lawless militia wannabe who had no business being where he was and armed as he was.
He suffered numerous additional attacks on his person following that fateful night. He was smeared by media lies. They accused him of having no connection to Kenosha, among other malicious slanders, when he in fact has a relative living in the city. Now leftists are threatening to kill him, according to Andy Ngo via Twitter.
There is a connection between the courtroom in Kenosha where Kyle is being judged and a hotel in Baltimore where our bishops are meeting this week. And that is defending what God has decreed is good: human life in this world and eternally through grace. And preparing to stand before God and render an account for having defended what God has decreed is good. Or not.
Bishops, after signing the weak and repetitive document on the Eucharist in Baltimore this week, need to take a hint from the Kyle Rittenhouse saga and face the ultimate question: Are there some things in life so dear, so precious, so necessary they are worth defending, and that they are willing to go up against the bad guys like Kyle did?
According to The Washington Post: “The text . . . said bishops are responsible ‘to work to remedy situations that involve public actions at variance with the visible communion of the Church and the moral law’.”
The statement, however, does nothing to change the greatest crisis in the Church: public sinner politicians parading up in public view to receive the Lord at Holy Mass while living in stark and grave contradiction to His law of love. Is there anything left worth putting everything on the line to defend, such as so many do for reputation, career, comfort, rank, or office? Or human life?
Catholic politicians, including Biden, are in unprecedented aggression mode to promote the legal murder of children through abortion, while at the same parading through private papal audiences and publicly receiving Communion, as if nothing at all is the matter. They are in fact public sinners of the highest order. The minimal witness of the Pope and bishops is to simply point this fact out. Publicly. And they refuse.
But then we speak of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ Himself, as the bishops did this week. Perhaps the fact that a mere 30 percent of Catholics are reported to believe in the true and Real Presence of the Lord Himself in the Blessed Sacrament is, in part, a result of the fact that the men most responsible for the first line of defense in His regard have abandoned their posts. For politicians.
The Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Savior, given for salvation, which salvation is frustrated, even potentially denied, if He is received in a state of serious sin; even more so if scandalous sin, because of the public promotion of evil on the part of the one receiving Him.
Biden, Pelosi, and other public sinners are delusional: They are not being helped by those who fail to deny them the Eucharist, unless they want to aid them in getting reelected. This is a failure to “discern the Body and Blood” of the Lord, which Paul makes clear is necessary to be saved.
We suffer in the Church, as well as outside it, due to the current politicization of everything. Politicians who publicly support the legal murder of the weakest and most defenseless among us perpetrate and enable the very worst crimes and abominable sins. They cannot receive any benefit from the sacrilege of receiving the Lord Eucharistically while rejecting Him in the preborn boy or girl, the least among us, in direct disobedience to His divine commands.
Our souls are at stake together with our humanity when we face the deadly enemy in combat. We have only one moral choice possible, otherwise we fail our very humanity. And our salvation.
We Catholics are down, in crisis, undefended and vulnerable, and our politicians are closing in on us. Our bishops are the main source of defense for the faithful. They are not only responsible for teaching us what is good and holy but also, for the sake of our salvation, responsible also for putting themselves physically on the line, and acting when necessary, in order to defend what is good and holy.
Will the bishops do more than merely extol the glories of the Holy Eucharist? Will they also act on what they proclaim by both defending Our Lord Truly Present sacramentally as well as the good of souls in sin who must repent and confess before receiving Him? This course of action seeks the good of all and best reflects the will of God that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
Canon 915 makes clear that there are indeed occasions when public sinners must be denied reception of the Holy Eucharist for their own good as well as that of the Church at large. If there is anything sacred, it must and should be the presence of the Lord Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Will the bishops finally act to defend that which is most worthy of, and deserves defending, if anything ever was?
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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