Staying the Course

If Joe Biden is formally and officially denominated to have been the winner of the 2020 Presidential election, life will go on for Americans, including the 70 million who did not vote for him. Anyone who lives say, in California, or New York, will find that nothing much has changed since they are one party Democrat states where money is taken from the populace for repeatedly failing programs and restrictions which ignore freedom of expression and movement are becoming the norm. The rest of the nation will soon experience the thrill of Progressivism. Those who voted for this outcome are clearly elated. Their voices and car horns resonated all day in my neighborhood the day the media crowned Mr. Biden as President Elect nothwithstanding the still extant (for now) Constitutional framework that makes state electors the ones to confirm the outcome. 

So it goes. Freedom is fragile. Nations come. They go. Then there is the Catholic Church. Although I know that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, at least intellectually, it is the Church leaders, the shepherds, the Bishops, who have created spiritual, emotional and psychological doubt so intense that many of the faithful wonder if they can maintain the intellectual hope. The Church, which is the Body of Christ on earth since his Ascension, will indeed survive, but too many will be convinced by the Scatterer, Diablo, that it cannot survive and loyalty to Him is amusingly foolish. He is being helped in this by so many Bishops, and priests who have the secular imprimatur of the media. I am aware that many Catholics will not agree with this assessment. But many do. And all I can say is that is what I see as plainly as the history which is being repeated and from which human beings never learn. Why I might see it and others, far more intelligent and learned than I am do not, I cannot say. And I can tell you, I am just as susceptible to the nudge of the Devil to separate me from my faith because of the overwhelming (to me) betrayal of Church leaders.

It has been hard enough during the pandemic lockdown to trust the motives of the shepherds. Yes, there has been a Corona Virus. Yes, if one is in a risk category, getting it can be terrible, as getting any disease which threatens life, can be terrible. But to tell Churches that they cannot function, and say one can watch on TV or one's tablet, was extreme, particularly in the case of the Catholic Church where many of the seven Sacraments occur inside a Church, and where some, like Last Rites and the concomitant funeral rites require more than 10 people. Still, in the beginning, I was among the faithful that understood and given that it would only be as long as it took, estimated at a few weeks, to "flatten the curve", I was not alarmed, though I was disappointed at the alacrity of the Church's compliance. I wonder if the Church at the time of Henry the VIII was quite as speedy in acceding to King Henry VIII need to separate from Rome so that he could replace the wife who could not provide a male heir with one who, hopefully, could. As we know ultimately that did not work out. 

It has, however, come to a point of feeling utter distrust in the motives of the institutional part of the Church, the human part, the always inclining toward evil human part. We are moving into the 8th months of lockdown, with threats of another full one, and Mr. Biden promising the press of full federal authority against the states (good luck though) and the Church leaders are silent, as far as I can hear, as the cooler and potentially rainy weather moves in. This past weekend, at my parish, though it was fortunately sunny, there were huge winds in the area where we have Mass, everyone with covered faces that remind me of every science fiction narrative I ever read in which humanity is humiliated and captured. The little overhang under which the makeshift altar sat and in which the altar servers also functioned was rattling. The chalice covers had to be held down by the package of intentions for the deceased. Of course, it is not yet quite so dire, but it made me think of photographs I have seen of battlefield Masses. The people of God make do. But in this case, does it any longer make sense?

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/us-catholic-bishops-congratulate-biden-as-president-elect-44702

I have written to the e mail provided for the Archdiocese, which is a media relations address. I expect the sort of response one gets from a politician.  All form. No substance. And with the clear intimation that the contact is an amusing annoyance from a plebian. 

Every so often the idea, which I do believe is one of those proddings from the same guy who got Eve to do his bidding, comes that I can't stay a Catholic anymore. But happily, with prayer, the idea dissipates and I remember that the Church is not a building but Jesus Christ of whom we are a part as the People of God. 

And then. As Dorothy Parker once observed, "What Fresh Hell is This?"

All through the election cycle, when I read the instructions for the Formation of Conscience for the Catholic Voter, all I could think of was, "It must be nice to be able to promote ambiguity about the Truth when it is convenient." Abortion, for example, and the fact that the Democrat ticket gives material cooperation, advocates and promotes the evil of abortion (and folks we are not talking only about the small percent of arguable exceptions like rape or incest, and the rare real danger to the physical life of the mother) was superseded by other issues considered, but not truly, proportionate. 

The Pope, the USCCB, both claiming that they were not endorsing a candidate (which is forbidden) in fact were clearly endorsing the Democrat ticket using careful, but clear, wording about things nuanced, which apparently the Dogma as articulated in the Catechism lacks. 

And today, the coup de grace. The USCCB, under the leadership of the Los Angeles Archbishop, congratulates the Catholic Vice President Biden on his as yet unofficial status as the President Elect. 

The leadership is contemptuous of the Traditional Catholics. I have always had reservations about them, myself. I have always favored the Novus Ordo. I like that the Holy Spirit (in my view) guided Vatican II to bring the people more into the liturgy. I have resisted the Extraordinary Form because it does not appeal to me as much as the person in the pew. But the FSSP is starting to look pretty good to me. People who have converted to Catholicism have said that among the reasons for the decision is that there is a Magesterium. What is true is not up to the ideas of different pastors and churchgoers. There is a unity of theology and an of the people in following that theology. Not these days. In fact, it appears that those who want to try to adhere to what is still supposedly the unchanging Truth, are becoming the outliers. It is a parallel to what is happening to the Conservative in the political realm. 

It does not matter much that I am not happy with the Church leaders. They aren't interested in what I have to say as it does not accede to the nuance which they would force on us, a nuance that really makes Catholicism just another religion, made in man's image not in God's. The Church must change to accommodate man, not man to accommodate God in this scenario. It would be less or a struggle for me if I could just accede to this and let my conscience off the hook. 

What am I going to do? It is a day to day thing.  Each day I pray just to remember Christ in the Eucharist. And the strength that He will, I beg, give me. It really is a battlefield.