Evangelize. Now. Or Die.

And so, the verdict is in.  A majority of Americans, and a majority of Catholic Americans, has re-elected a regime that has mandated the faithful to fund infanticide, sacralized sodomy, and is poised to drive religion, not only from the public square, but from health care, education, and charity work as well.

Fedora-tip to Mark Shea for this image.

If you're within shouting distance of my generation, you may remember watching the Berlin Wall come down in 1989.  Like me, you may very well have rejoiced that the Cold War was finally over.

Bet you didn't realize we'd lost.  I know I didn't.

When President Obama said that America was no longer a Christian nation, we called it an outrageous lie.  In fact, the president was merely telling us, correctly, what time it was.

It is twilight - evening in America.

Welcome to the Great Rude Awakening.  We are no longer a center-right nation that values hard work and fair play.  We are now a center-left nation that values fair work and hard play.  Religion is the new porn, and vice versa.  Life begins when you're old enough to vote, and ends when you're voted off the island.  Individualism is selfishness, the Gospel is hate speech, and self-denial is genocide.

Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.

And it's all the will of the people.  Vox populi, vox diaboli.  The "silent majority" that gave Nixon his landslide forty years ago, that gave Reagan his mandate thirty years ago?  A lot of them are dead now, and their descendants do not share their fathers' values.  We are a minority.  Not even a minority.  We are a small fringe that makes up part of a minority, together with libertarians, hard-money activists, protectionists, Ayn Randians, military adventurers, and yes, sad to say, even a few white supremacists.  Even if we somehow take back the reins of power, what could we do?  Ban abortion and gay marriage, drive the social engineers out of our schools and replace them with effective teachers, re-establish blue laws to encourage church attendance?  How?  How do you enforce a law, however just, that most of society doesn't want and will not back up?  Look at Prohibition.  There's no way to enact such laws without becoming the dictatorial police state we most fear.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops must be in a similar quandary.  The conference goes into its Fall General Assembly next week knowing that more than half its flock are giving it the finger and are de facto apostates and/or schismatics who will drop the name of Catholic the minute it works to their disadvantage.  It would seem that the bishops must either put in their teeth and start laying down the law, or resign themselves to being not so much a prophetic voice in the wilderness as a tree falling in the forest that no one hears.

Locutus, president of catholicsforchoice.borg

So what to do?  Politically, we're beaten; it's hopeless.  I'm not saying we shouldn't still vote.  I'm not saying we should turn our backs on society, retreat to our Catholic ghettos of old, and wait for the Huns to arrive and start Middle Ages II.  For one thing, the Visigoths and Vandals are already here.  They're us.  Without the sanctifying grace of Christ and His Church, we're devolving back into the barbarian hordes our ancestors were.

What I am saying is that we can't count on mere politics to save us anymore.  At best, a Romney administration would have only been a stop-gap, while we worked on building permanent solutions.  Like Original Sin or falling down a well, we got ourselves into this mess, but that doesn't mean we can get ourselves out.

If we want to save our country, our society, our civilization, there's only one move left open to us:

Do I mean preaching on street corners?  Only if you're good at it.  The world has heard all the sermons.  It's heard all the apologetics.  It's ready to deny and ignore them all.  But one thing it can't ignore is personal holiness.  For most of us, it means random acts of kindness.  The corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Mt. 5: 16).  We must be prepared to jack up our prayer life, and to make spiritual sacrifices and self-mortifications, for "this kind cannot be driven out by anything except prayer and fasting" (Mk. 9: 29).  We need to live close to the sacraments, so that they'll see we've been with Jesus.

That above all.  Get.  With.  Christ.  Read his love letters in the Scriptures.  Visit Him in Eucharistic Adoration.  If your parish doesn't have a Perpetual Adoration chapel, adore Him in the tabernacle.  If you can see Him through the accidents of bread and wine, a couple of metal doors should be no problem.

Get with His Mother, too.  She was the first evangelist, as Mother Theresa tells us, because the first thing she did after she received Christ was to bring him to St. Elizabeth in the Visitation.  The Rosary is Our Lady's lasso.  It has roped more souls into heaven than even the angels could count.

Bishop Sheen (forty years ago, no less!) predicted that the postmodern Church was like Gideon's army in Judges 7.  Christ is thinning his ranks, telling the cowards and the comfortable to go home.  We may be few, but He is with us:  "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still" (Ex. 14: 14).

And for God's sake, be joyful!  Don't get into arguments.  Don't get mad at your enemies.  Pity them.  Say, like Shelley's Prometheus, "I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, being evil."  Consider that, as John Paul II said, hell begins here.  If you've been far enough down the path of mortal sin, as I have, you've felt it.  You know how awful it is.  Imagine what some of these folks who hate us are going through.  Show some compassion, and remember, we're here to help.

We've got to change the culture.  That's the real transformation America needs.  If we can do that, the laws, economics, and politics will take care of themselves.

And If You Liked The Canine Liturgy . . .

You'll love the St. Blog's Liturgolympics going on at Acts Of The Apostasy.

Giant puppets, liturgical dancers in shower curtains, and yes, even a blessing by Barny the dinosaur, all contending for the very top of the bottom rung in liturgy.  Check ye it, and vote early and often for your . . . ahem, favorites.

UPDATE:  And it's the Canine Communion Mass for the win!  Congrats to Fr. Greg and his merry band for sweeping both the Liturgolympics and the Guibourg Award for Best Black Mass!  You've earned it!

This is, of course, the Black Mass in the Extraordinary Form,
The Ordinary Form being abortion.

Going To The Dogs

I'm more of a cat person, myself.  I'm told Pope Benedict is, too.

Tip o' the Fedora to Father Z. for this story.

Down under, where dissent seems to be working overtime to undo the graces bestowed by World Youth Day 2008, some lovely folks have gathered around a suspended priest and decided to pass out Holy Communion to anything with a mouth.

FATHER Greg Reynolds wants his church of dissident Catholics to welcome all - ''every man and his dog'', one might say, risking the non-inclusive language he deplores - but even he was taken aback when that was put to the test during Mass yesterday.
A first-time visitor arrived late at the Inclusive Catholics service in South Yarra with a large and well-trained German shepherd. When the consecrated bread and wine were passed around, the visitor took some bread and fed it to his dog.
Apart from one stifled gasp, those present showed admirable presence of mind - but the dog was not offered the cup!
Father Reynolds, a Melbourne priest for 32 years, launched Inclusive Catholics earlier this year. He now ministers to up to 40 people at fortnightly services alternating between two inner-suburban Protestant churches.
The congregation includes gay men, former priests, abuse victims and many women who feel disenfranchised, but it is optimistic rather than bitter.

Not like us "bitter clingers," I'm sure.  Everything's always happy in the Church of the Warm and Fuzzy - Extremely fuzzy, in this case.

This is soooOOOOOoo just the kind of thing I love to see.  You've got a suspended priest performing illicit Masses in Protestant churches (must be that whole "enemy of my enemy" thing), albeit doing as little of it as he can and have the Mass remain valid.  Both he and his congregation insist that their sins are not sins, in fact are meritorious in some cases.  Odd they should need a Savior, no?  In fact, I doubt they believe they do need Him.  They certainly don't seem to believe that He will come to judge the living, and the dead, and the world by fire.  That's just ooh, so judgmental.  Hence, the Eucharist doesn't really mean all that much - not like it's the source and summit of our worship or anything - so they pass out the Eucharist to all and sundry, and they, in turn, give it to their dogs.  Ironic that "dog" is "God" spelt backwards.  Furthermore, just as at Mass we receive Christ twice over, in the words of Scripture and in Holy Communion, these folks have dishonored both the Liturgy of the Word and of the Eucharist.  For Christ explicitly said, "Give not that which is holy to dogs" (Matt. 7:6), so it's obvious that they respect neither Christ's teaching nor His Person.

Pray tell, by what stretch of the imagination does one offer worship to Christ by spitting in His face and making a mockery of Him?

Congratulations, Father Reynolds!  You've just won the Abbé Guibourg Award for Best Black
Mass of the Year!

See, when you desecrate the Blessed Sacrament in the name of your faith and make a mockery of the Liturgy, you are de facto meeting all the elements necessary for Satanic worship.  Now all those misinformed Protestants who think Catholics are really devil-worshipers can look to you, Father Reynolds, and know their fears are confirmed.  I sure hope you're proud!

Oh, and btw . . . your visitor, who actually gave Communion to his dog?  If he ever was officially Catholic (y'know, baptized and all that), he'll be glad to know that he's probably incurred an automatic excommunication, reserved to the Holy See.  That's right!  If he wants to confess this sin and be absolved, the penance and absolution have to come from the Pope his own self!

Of course, since you lot seem to want as little to do with the Pope as possible, I don't suppose you'll be knocking on his door any time soon.  But hey, we'll leave the light on in the sanctuary for you.  Meanwhile, enjoy this preview of a special liturgy coming by way of your local ordinary . . .just for you!

If You're Going to San Francisco, Lock 'n' Load!

Far to the West, I feel a great disturbance in the Force:  a million voices, screaming at once, chaos, confusion, mass panic, dogs and cats living together . . . What could be happening?

Oh, I see.  The bishops' Traditional Marriage czar just got appointed Archbishop of San Francisco.  That'll put bees in a few bonnets.  Just in time for the Year of Faith, too!  What a swell coincidence!

This is why, back in 2005 when I learned whom they'd picked to succeed John Paul II, I danced around, singing, "No more Mr. Nice Pope!"  The house party's over; Mommy and Daddy have come home early.  I get the feeling this metropolitan won't be slow to initiate the long-awaited "dialogue" that Archbishop Niederauer never quite got around to.

Archbishop-Elect Salvatore Cordileone - a new Lionheart for a new Crusade against a  Very Different Infidel Indeed!

This is the equivalent of putting Father Z. in charge of the LCWR reform (not a bad idea, since it looks like the SSPX Reconciliation's going to take longer than we'd hoped).

God bless our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and the Archbishop-Elect.  May his reign be long and yield a bountiful harvest of souls for Christ!

Oh, and by the way . . .

OH, ROCHESTER . . . LOCK 'N' LOAD - YOU'RE NEXT!

The Simple Faith of Satan, Appendix A

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once observed that, "As far as the New York Times is concerned, the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic."  It seems strange that those people in the Church but not of her, though their numbers and relevance dwindle geometrically with each passing year, remain the heroes/victims of the modern media narrative, while the institutional Church, livelier, healthier, and better organized than it has been in years, gets painted as the Host of Mordor, out to destroy all that is gentle, just, and good in the world.  Where on earth did all this nonsense come from?

George Weigel traces it to a series of articles covering Vatican Council II, some fifty years ago, which happened to dovetail nicely (as it still does) with the way postmodern society looks at the world:

 In a culture in which people imagine that religious conviction is a lifestyle choice of no more intellectual or moral consequence than the choice of a pet, it takes serious effort to grasp that what the Catholic Church teaches about the nature of God or the requisites for ministerial ordination is entirely different from the choice between a schnauzer and a dachshund. And in a secularized culture in which “choice” is the one sacred word, a Church that insists that its leadership teaches authoritatively is going to be easily portrayed as ham-handed, insensitive, out of step.

Read the whole article here.  It's worth your time.  And I'm not just saying that because it says many of the same things I've said in these pages.

The Bibles of Babel: 4 Guidelines For a New, Improved, American Bible

If you're one of the many who still think Catholics aren't Bible-Christians, you probably don't read Catholic blogs (except mine, of course, or you wouldn't be here.  Thank you - I'm honored.)  The Catholic blogosphere is loaded with converts from Fundamentalist and Evangelical faiths who've learned the opposite is true.  The Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite employs more Scripture, and a broader range of readings, than you'll find in any other denomination.

There's just one problem:  the versions of Scripture we use are all over the place.  Different prayer groups, Scripture classes, and books on Scripture use different translations, made on different principles:  We have the New American Bible (NAB), the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (RSV-CE, 1st & 2nd editions), the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, the Good News Bible, and so on.  Worse still, the version we use in the liturgy is . . .None of the above!  Will the real Word of God please stand up?

In an attempt to remedy this, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has ordered a new edition that they hope will be suitable for all and sundry.  I applaud the idea wholeheartedly, but I worry about the results.  The NAB is one of the worst, most useless translations of Scripture I know of.  One wants to ask its editors and translators just what the Bible did to them to make them hate it so.

Micah Murphy wrote a short but interesting blog on this.  Visit ye him, and take his poll.  I did, and when I was done commenting, I realized I had enough material for a post of my own.  "Blogger," said I, "blog thyself!"

So without further ado, here are four suggestions (since of course, the bishops hang on my every word, as well they should) for putting together a universal Catholic Bible in English.

1.  Vet Everyone Involved

I know, I know, background checks and loyalty oaths smack of totalitarianism.  Of course, the people you're looking to weed out already think the Church is a brutal dictatorship (except that you're not free to leave most brutal dictatorships any time you like).  I don't know how much may have changed in recent years, but back, say, in the '90s, a vast majority of Scripture scholars were de facto dissenters.  The notes and commentaries in most Bibles issued since the Council suffer from a bad case of Modernism.

Our first guideline, then, ought to be:  Don't let heterodox scholars anywhere near this project.  Everyone involved should be thoroughly grounded in, and consider himself bound to, the principles laid down in Dei Verbum and Divino Afflante Spiritu.  A working knowlegde of Pope Benedict's biblical theology wouldn't hurt, either.  Here's a simple test:  Get everybody together, then pass around a copy of the Catechism, blessed by a priest.  Make sure everyone touches it.  If any of the committee members burst into flames, crumble to dust, or exhibit signs of demonic possession as laid out in the Rituale Romanum, that's a good indicator you don't want them on your team. 


If the Bishops ask nicely, perhaps they could persuade Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch to let them peek at their notes for the new Ignatius Study Bible.  Once we have commentary that thinks with the Church, we can relax a little on some of the finer points of translation.  


Which leads me to:

2. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  

When we consider pastoral needs, we too often play to the lowest common denominator.  Note the arguments against the new translation of the Sacramentary, that Joe Pewsitter can't understand words like, "consubstantial."  This attitude, along with a little ivory tower arrogance, has led recent translations to abandon the traditional phrasing of well-known passages, either to simplify or clarify points which often aren't all that important.  Most parishioners hate change.  Ask any pastor:  Announce something different - however well-intended or necessary - and you'll smell the tar and feathers simmering away.  

Actually, all he said was, you can't self-intinct.

When my wife and I married, we pulled out a 1962 Missal and chose the prayers (in English) used in the Extraordinary Form (though neither the wedding nor the accompanying Mass were Extraordinary Form).  I said, "With this ring, I thee wed, and I plight unto thee my troth."  Why?  Because those are the words my father said in 1967, and his father said in 1936, and so on, back through history.  Doing something like that, realizing that, reminds you of the fact that there are no empty seats at Mass.  Any Mass.  Ever.  The saints, the angels, and our loved ones gone before are all there with us.


Small-"t" tradition has its claims.  Unless it actively hinders formation, leave it be.  Phrases like, "Hail, full of grace," "the gates of hell shall not prevail," etc. have the weight of tans-generational consistency.  Leave it to the catechists and homilists to explain, for example, that Jesus probably meant Sheol, rather than Gehenna.  In fact, we've all but eliminated the word, "hell" from our readings, which could lead folks to wonder whether we still believe in such a thing.  And that does hinder formation.


3. Stop neutering and watering down the language.  
Jesus warned about multiplying words; someone should warn translators about multiplying syllables, often in the name of mollifying sensibilities.  We see this constantly in public and political discourse.

Jesus Christ, however, didn't talk like other public figures (Matthew 7: 29).  Pope Benedict, in his Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 1, points out that rather than "astonished," the Greek says the people were "alarmed" at Christ's teaching.  Jesus does not mince words.  Jesus does not equivocate or euphemize.  Jesus is in.  Your.  Face.  


If He doesn't make you at least a little uncomfortable, chances are you're not getting the message.


4) Please, please, in the name of all that's holy, have somebody with an ear not made of tin READ THE BLESSED THING ALOUD!  
Why is the KJV still so popular after four hundred years?  Why do we still hear it quoted so often, even by people who can barely read, despite its inkhorn words and archaic phrasing?  Because it is beautiful.  Its translators were Shakespeare's contemporaries (Some think the Bard himself may have had a hand in it).  They read it aloud as they worked, to ensure that when proclaimed, it would ring out, clear and memorable.  We need that back.  That's why, when I pray the Psalms, I go back to the Douay-Confraternity translation.  It sounds like poetry - the poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson, not Rod McKuen and Adrienne Rich.

We should try that sometime.

Yes, I know, it's pro-Reformation, but listen to Joss Ackland's readings, dammit!

Speaking of Sci-Fi Analogies . . .

If you prefer Lucas to Roddenberry, set aside half an hour or so and lose yourself in this epic saga of dissent and redemption from the Vestal Morons.  B****y F*****g Brilliant!

Hat tip for this image to the fine bloggers at Team Orthodoxy.

The Simple Faith of Satan, Part 3: WE ARE CHURCH! YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

In the last part of this series, we discussed some of the confusion that arose in the wake of Vatican II.  What the Church had intended merely as an upgrade, many people interpreted as an all-out reboot:

Which may lead many of the faithful to ask,

WHO IS THE CHURCH?

(AND WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?)

It's not the first time we've had an identity crisis in the Church.  The first one came to a head about 1800 years ago, with the Arian Controversy.  In those days the question wasn't so much who the Church was, as who Jesus Christ himself was.  Finding and formulating the right answer took over a hundred years and four ecumenical councils.  Bishops with armies fought it out over this.  The result was the doctrinal definition that most (though not all) Christian denominations today accept:

That is to say, Our Lord Jesus Christ has two separate, distinct, and complete natures (one human, one divine), but is nonetheless one Divine Person.

Now, that's what we call a mystery, and not in the Sherlock Holmes sense.

The whole two natures thing is a difficult balancing act, and as a result, it's easy to focus on one to the exclusion of the other.  Thus, the pre-conciliar Church tended to stress Christ's Divinity to the exclusion of His Humanity, the clergy over the laity (remember when we talked about Clericalism last time), subsidiarity over solidarity, and souls as individuals rather than as part of the Church as a whole.

Vatican II set out to correct this imbalance, but many in the Church, particularly those in positions of power,  wound up overcompensating.  Salvation became a collective affair,  spirituality became human sentiment, almsgiving became social work, and instead of having the Gospel preached to them, the poor got something closer to the Communist Manifesto.  And our religious went from looking like this:

 . . .to looking more like these folks:

As a matter of fact, I have a lot more respect for today's Pagans, Wiccans, etc. who are at least honest enough to call themselves what they are than people who call themselves Catholic and subvert the definition of the, to the point of making it mean all but its opposite.

Case in point.  Fedora tip to Catholics Against Catholics for Choice for this .

Hence, for example, the current difficulties with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a "subsidiary" of what Father Z. calls the Magisterium of Nuns, one of the myriad heads of the Hydra of dissent (remember, Antichrist has seven heads).  This is not to let renegade bishops, priests, and monks off the hook. (WTF? Time was, you couldn't get Germans to stop following orders.  I'm thinking it's that overcompensation thing again.)  They're scandalized by the suggestion that Catholic communities, dioceses, and theologians should be, you know, Catholic Catholic, as opposed to their own inferior brand.  Naturally, this doesn't make a lot of sense.  LarryD at Acts of the Apostasy (a refugee from my home diocese) imagines how it'd play out in the real world.  But reality's never been these folks' trip.

Dr. John Zmirak described this re-branding phenomenon in terms of the meme, "All Your Church Are Belong To Us."  I like to think of it more in terms of the Borg. (Definition here for the uninitiated.)  The individual means nothing; you're part of the collective, whether you want it or not.  Just look at their hymns.  Mention "Soul of my Savior," or "O, Lord, I Am Not Worthy," and they'll react like vampires in sunlight.  Those hymns are all but banned.  Today it's all about US.  We Celebrate; We Remember; We Are Companions on the Journey; We, We, We, We, All the Way Home.

Your parish has been assimilated.  Resistance is futile.

And since we're all the Church, and we're all equal before God, nobody else can tell us what to believe . . .

 . . .or how to behave . . .

 . . .and we can redefine the faith to suit our personal needs, because it's all about WE.

One of the biggest re-definition battles seems to be in regard to the Church herself.  We often use the term, perhaps somewhat unfairly, as interchangeable with the hierarchical clergy.  Defined in the broadest meaningful sense, the Church is all of us, the baptized, "the whole universal community of believers" (CCC, Paragraph 752).  We are all a part of the Mystical Body of Christ.  This distinction matters because there are still many laity in the church today who bear the scars of high-handed Clericalism in the past.  After all, as St. Paul tells the Corinthians, the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." (1Cor. 12: 23)  The clergy, therefore, cannot say to the laity, "We have no need of you."

On the other hand . . .

He also says, if the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. (1Cor. 12: 15-16)

So, the next time you hear somebody say, "The Church is not the hierarchy," or "We're all the Church," you'll know you're being fed a partial truth to mask the taste of a bitter lie.  Yes, the Church is more than her hierarchy - much more - just as an army is more than its officer corps.  But it's the officers who call the shots.  Furthermore, impersonating an officer is a crime, and attempting to run things when you're not an officer is mutiny.

What's that?  You say the Church isn't an army?  Guess again!  Haven't you ever heard of . . .

What do you think all those Old Testament wars were there to teach us about.  It's spiritual warfare.  The world is the theater, and our enemy is the devil.  You know, the first one to say, "I will not serve?"

Fortunately, their days are numbered.  If the dissenters today are louder and angrier than they've been since the '70s, then like the devil in Revelation 12: 12, it's because they know their time is short.  There's a new generation of Spiritual Warriors out there.  They went through basic training with Blessed John Paul II, and now they're getting AIT with our current CINCEARTH, Benedict XVI, the Pope of Catholic Identity.

 . . .while the average member of the LCWR is 73.

And while they're having their little Sabbat conferences where they discuss “moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus . . .” 

they fail to notice that the real Spirit of Vatican II is finally standing up.  And Jesus and His Church are already moving beyond them.

I think I've said my piece on this for a while, but I'll keep monitoring the situation, and we'll do Parts 4, 5, and 6 as needed.  In this case, the resistance is far from futile.

The Simple Faith of Satan, Part 2: Phaëton's Epic Phail - or - Don't Treat That Puppy Like a Dog

The Graeco-Roman gods were much like our celebrities and politicians today.  They lived in an exclusive neighborhood, only took notice of human affairs when it suited their agendas, and enjoyed all manner of power, privilege, and drooling sycophants, despite lacking any discernible signs of intelligence, decency, or even common sense.  Needless to say, this made them extremely popular among the Greeks and Romans--watching and recounting the foibles of their deities made them feel all kinds of better about themselves.  Today, we'd give them their own reality show.

In one of these episodes, the sun god (Apollo or Helios, depending which version you read) has a fling with a mortal woman and gets her pregnant.  Since Roe v. Wade and the HHS mandate haven't been invented yet, the child is born, and they name him Phaëton (and you thought Frank Zappa was cruel!)  Without his father around, the boy grows into an angsty teen with identity issues, not unlike the young James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot.  So to soothe his burning self-image, he decides to claim his heritage.

Climbing to the top of Mt. Olympus, he confronts his father and plays the Deadbeat Dad card to guilt-trip the old man into giving him the keys to the sun chariot.  He then proceeds to score himself a ginormous blunt and a bottle of Everclear, and take the sun for a joyride.

It ends badly.  After several hours of weaving all over the heavens, shooting holes in traffic signs, taking out mailboxes, and burning crop circles into the earth, he's screwed things up so much that even Zeus notices.  To restore order and mollify his shareholders, the king of the gods takes the kid out with a thunderbolt and lets the horses find their way home to sleep it off.

What does any of this have to do with dissent within the Church?  Well, the roots of modern dissent stem from a similar situation.

During the Middle Ages (c. 476-1453 A.D.), the shapers and movers in the Church were in a bit of a quandary.  The good news was, the barbarians were converting in droves.  The bad news was, they were still barbarians.

St. Augustine (353-430) had said, "I believe, in order to understand."  Looks good on parchment.  In practice, however, lots of people believed, but precious few understood.  Charlemagne (r. 768-814) helped a bit by inventing Catholic Schools, but that only did so much good because:

1. There weren't enough teachers to go around.
2. Books were all handwritten and cost more than most people's homes.
3. When medieval peasants had to choose between sending the kids off to school, or keeping them home to help get the harvest in before the autumn rain and frost got hold of it, most of them decided they'd rather eat than read. (I've often wondered if that's why it's considered bad manners to read at the table.)

So what was the Church to do?  Well, she did lots of things, in fact.  She invented universities to provide a better standard of education, encouraged every promising child to attend the cathedral schools, and used the artwork inside the church buildings to give lessons in catechetics and salvation history.  She even sponsored the rebirth of theatre, to illustrate Bible stories and lessons in morality.

Still, it was fairly clear that these guys

weren't going to ready for concepts like transubstantiation, the hypostatic union, or the Mosaic roots of Catholic liturgical praxis any time soon.

The Church's response was two-pronged.  First, she took the delicate stuff (e.g., the liturgy) and put it entirely in the hands of trained professionals, to make sure things got done right (it almost worked, most of the time).  The laity were given a passive role, offering their own prayers silently in union with the Eucharistic sacrifice of the altar.  Great?  No, but it was the best anyone could come up with, given the circumstances of the time.

Secondly, she took the Depost of Faith--conciliar documents, Papal pronouncements, the Bible, and the best of the Ancient Fathers--collated it, systematized it, and condensed it into a series of lists and short answers that were easy to memorize:  10 Commandments, 7 Deadly Sins, 7 Gifts of the Holy Ghost, 3 Theological Virtues, 3 Evangelical Counsels, 4 Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance, etc.

Think how many lists and sound-bytes fill our lives today, especially online, be it YouTube clips, Cracked.com, or St. Peter's List.  We can't get enough of 'em!  Same thing back then.  By the end of the Council of Trent in 1563, she had a reasonably complete Non-reader's Digest condensed version of the Faith (it eventually evolved into the Baltimore Catechism).  Plus, she'd started a seminary system to produce a better grade of priests.  They'd be well-formed, literate, and qualified to hear confessions on a regular basis (and make frequent confessions themselves).  With the printing press changing the game on education, the laity were sure to follow.

And that's just what happened.

By the twentieth century, the Church realized that her lay children were smart enough now to get more directly engaged with the Faith, living it out in the world, and applying its values in the public square.  Vatican Council II streamlined the liturgy (even more than Trent had), permitted use of the vernacular to help the laity get a handle on what was going on, and opened up a bit to show the world outside there was a Church in there they might want to check out.  In a word, the Church trusted us.

And we blew it, just like Phaëton.

What happened?

Well, for one thing, although Modern Man was indeed literate and better educated than his medieval forbears, he wasn't necessarily well educated in the Faith.  Remember that condensed edition I mentioned that became the Baltimore Catechism?  Well, that wound up being part of the problem.  Not that there's anything wrong with the Baltimore Catechism.  It was, and still is, a fine way to begin your formation in the Faith.

But it's a lousy place to end your formation in the Faith.

That's what was happening all too often to John Q. Catholic.  The "trained experts" had been responsible for all the important stuff for so long that it had gone to their heads.  They really didn't feel like they much needed the laity for anything except to "pray, pay, and obey."  This was the unfortunate attitude known as Clericalism.  Since they decided that anything beyond the most basic level theology was too much for the average layman, they didn't really teach any of the whys and wherefores of the Faith.  As a result, they had to solid answers to give when an increasingly secular world started questioning them.

And a secular world it was, folks.  Religion had been merely a set of motion people went through because that was what one did.  When a generation came along that demanded a rationale for all this keeping up of appearances, nobody seemed to have one.  The result was a social revolution.  And wouldn't you just know it'd come along just as the Council put the reins in the hands of the laity.

This is why many people who lived through those days (Traddies, for example) feel that the Council effectively did little more than put the inmates in charge of the asylum.  Sad thing is, the lunatics thought so, too.  This is what today we call:

THE HERMENEUTIC OF RUPTURE

I know, I know, I hate big, pretentious, annoying words like "hermeneutic," too.  It simply means that a whole lot of people couldn't tell the difference between this . . .

3 years in the early '60s.

  . . .and this:

3 days in the late '60s.

So if today your liturgy looks like this,

Now you know why.

More on where this led us next time.

The Simple Faith of Satan, Part 1: Introduction

Thou believest that there is one God.  Thou dost well.  The devils also believe, and tremble.  (James 2: 19)

I want to talk about dissent.  Actually, I don't, but it's been making the news so much lately that I figure if it won't shut up, why should I?

Between the huff over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's attempt to reel in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious,  their recent censure of an heretical book on sexuality by a Sister of Mercy who must make the ones who taught me blush, and the never-ending dust-up between the U.S. Bishops' Conference and an all-but-excommunicated HHS Secretary, dissent this year seems louder than it's been since Humane Vitae came out, and more pathetic than it's been since this:

Life Magazine, April 27, 1962.

Now, in our last talk, I mentioned some of this, but I was aiming more at the garden variety, non-denominational Church-hater:  the kind who'd gladly follow Jesus anywhere, if He'd just stop hanging out with those shady-looking guys from the docks, who smell like fish, get everything bass-ackwards, and think they're somebody just because they're with Him.  In this series, I'd like to address dissent amongst the insiders, those who insist on bearing the name of Catholic, yet think nothing of ignoring, denying, or even outright publicly condemning Catholic teaching.  See whether they look Catholic to you, or whether they remind you more of the  people in Revelation who "say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." (Apoc. 2: 9)

"'Synagogue of Satan?'" you say?  "Do you mean to tell me they're Witches?  Devil-Worshipers?  Anton La Vey and all that?

Well, no, of course not.  I suspect that very few, if any of them, go that far.  But consider:  Jesus emptied Himself of His Divine Glory and took on the form of a slave, to serve and not to be served.  It was Satan who famously said, "Non serviam," yet insisted upon his right to remain in heaven, where only God has any real right to dwell. 

As the master shall the servant be.  When I look at this:

 . . .I have to ask myself (once I'm done laughing):

Whom are they serving?

And whom are we?