The Buffet Must Close

Buffets, the home of comfort food.  Being a bit of a foodie, I avoid buffets.  I am not saying that there isn't filling food there, only that most of the food there has the nutritional value of wax paper.  I refer to most of it as molded salt and fat.  The few healthier options are so cooked within an inch of their existence as to have lost any nutritional value.  But I have seen people load up plates so high there should be snow caps in the tops.  Food isn't the only place these buffets exists.
Media is like a buffet.  Most of the mass produce stuff isn't worth the film or paper it comes on.  They are the mental equivalent of comfort food.  Junk consumed that has no positive effect on its partaker. I am a channel surfer on the few times I watch TV.  I  find most of what is there to be either juvenile, extremely predictable, or crude.  Shock seems to be the new comfort food. The commercials make the shows look like classical art.  Commercials seemingly break into three groups: awful stereotypes selling disposable junk, medications, and lawsuits about the aforementioned medications.  The media sells soul sucking lies meant to to tell you if you consume you will be happy.

The same holds true for the spiritual.  Some time ago, I saw a blog proclaiming the cafeteria was closed.  It was run by a newly minted Catholic agog about his faith.  For awhile the cafeteria was closed until, of course, a dish was served he didn't like and the cafeteria was open for business again.  The dish in question challenged him in an area he did not wished to be challenged, and so it goes.  He certainly isn't the only one by a long shot.  Cafeteria Catholicism, as it is called, has been with us since the beginning.  It is easy to pick and choose what we will believe and not believe.  It is at the heart of every single heresy, every split, and every sin.  When we view the Church as a buffet of many dishes that we can pick and choose what we want, we stray away from the essential call to conversion that is the call of Christ.  When we treat faith as a buffet, we close the Holy Spirit out of sections of our lives by our own choice.

Overcoming this is hard.  The world will encourage us to treat faith as a buffet if we must even pay attention to faith at all.  It will encourage us to mold something comfortable. It will encourage a faith that lets us keep our favorite sins.  However, like a food buffet, it may taste good for the moment but is largely unfulfilling and nutritionally sterile.  There are some dishes it will tell you to stay away from, especially absolutely anything to do with Catholic sexual ethics.  They will tell you it taste nasty; and like a person who loves the taste of junk food, it will.  Real food always taste different than junk food, but it is good for you whereas the junk food isn't.  By the same token, real faith (the kind of faith that brings transformation and growth)  taste different than the society in which we live, but it is good for you and will make you a better person.

Treating faith like a buffet or cafeteria leads to spiritual schizophrenia.  We fall into a compartmentalized existence which will be maddening.  I will allow God in in this area but not that area.  It is also the easiest route to seeing God as a servant who is to come at our beck and call and otherwise leave us alone.  It will also engender resentment against the Church, a deep seat belief that it is the church that much change its teachings to suit the dishes I wish to ignore. This will lead to either an empty faith or a departure from faith.

So, how do we combat this? I would imagine that if people could see what the bad food is doing their bodies they might well stop.  I would imagine a good dose of real knowledge of nutrition paired with an emphasis on self preservation would go a long way.  Sure, some would still chose poorly.  By the same token, knowledge about why we believe what we believe, presuming that what we believe is known, would go a long way as well.  Knowledge about the faith would lead us to a inescapable understanding that all of the teachings of the church are intertwined in a simple dictate: to love God with all our soul, might, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  This divine love is the heart of every single Catholic teaching.  To treat the teachings as a buffet is to say there are places where I do not need to love God, my neighbor, or myself.  Hence, coming to a true knowledge of the faith is important.

Knowledge is not enough on its own.  People might well know that junk food is bad for them and eat it anyway.    The next step in moving away from the cafeteria and buffet is the cultivation of the virtues.  By cultivation, I mean acquiring and using the disciplines necessary to grow in faith.  As love is the mother of all virtue, the selflessness of divine love is the surest and healthiest food available.  As good food and drink can be acquired taste after years of junk food, so selfless love will take some effort after years of the junk food  that is the emotion we call love.

To my brother clerics: we must make these thing available in our parishes.  We must take care that what is being taught in our schools, RCIA programs, PSR/CCD programs and such isn't the intellectual  and spiritual equivalent of cotton candy; but is solid and real food; the truth applied with charity.  Too often we have been like nutritionists who play cashier at the buffet line.  Sometimes we grow weary of trying to teach the truth to shut ears.  Sometimes we don't know what we should know ourselves.  Sometimes we just don't want to be hassled and hide behind the ubiquitous "just follow your conscience " to absolve ourselves of the effort and risk involved in proclaiming the truth.  It is an occupational hazard that some will walk away in anger; they did so to Christ Himself, we cannot imagine being treated better.  I know it's hard, but we must remember that our job isn't to teach them to be nice, but to be holy.  Holiness will require real food...it will require an unapologetic adeherence to truth.

The buffet must close.  It is killing us.  It is emptying out our churches, driving our youth away, driving our men away, and gutting our faith to be little more than empty comfort food.  Pope Benedict XVI once said, "The world offers you comfort. You were not created for comfort, but for greatness."  Greatness will never be found in the buffet line.  Comfort will be found at the buffet line, but greatness will not. Greatness comes from truth, it comes from our willingness to love.  Step away from the buffet and its empty worth and move towards that which will feed you with truth.

Pray that the Lord will Send More Laborers for the Harvest

"And he said to them: The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send labourers into his harvest."  Luke 10:2

Being away from my parish for vacation, I did not preach this morning at Mass.  Nonetheless, as this topic is near and dear to my heart, I can't pass up the opportunity to write down what I probably would have said this morning at Sunday Mass, reflecting on this weekend's Sunday Readings.

On my vacation, as we were traveling through Kansas to get to Colorado, we traveled through mile after mile of crop lands, stretching for as far as the eye could see (and well beyond in truth).  Harvesting all of that must be an incredible undertaking.  I wonder if that is what Jesus sees now....tons of fields for harvest...stretching beyond what the eye can see.  Indeed the harvest is great.

So what is the harvest?  What is the purpose of the harvest? The harvest is not just merely human souls, but their faith.  Both the person and their lives.  Every single person who has walked on the face of this planet is supposed to be part of this harvest.  Not all will be.  Some will lives of weeds and not grain.  Jesus tells us this will be collected to be burned.  The end time harvest, of which Jesus speaks in many parables, is when all that belongs to Christ will be eternally gathered to Himself.  Until then, the harvest to be gathered is the faith, love, hope of the People of God and their souls for eternity.

But a harvest is not meant merely to be stored ad infinitum.  Harvest are meant to be used to nourish.  What is nourished is the relationship we are supposed to have with God and one another.  One does not throw love, hope, faith, or souls into a vacuum...they have a directionality.  The virtues, especially the theological virtues are meant to deepen our relationship with God.  God receives these as an act of thanksgiving and in return gives us the supreme grace of His Body and Blood so that more may be harvested.  The harvest is brought here to Church as a thanksgiving sacrifice to God.  He turns that harvest into nourishment which He in turns gives to us.  But, let's be clear, there would be nothing to even harvest if it were not for God Himself who gives us the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love through which we can have something to offer back.

But who are the laborers, then?  That is twofold.  First, you are.  You are the one that brings in your thanksgiving sacrifice here and now in this church.  You bring them and they are handed over to the other laborer, the priest, who collects those offerings and offers them with his own to God.  Do we not pray over the priest "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands ..." after he has asked "Pray brothers and sister,  that my sacrifice and yours, may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father."?  We do.  The harvest is brought weekly before our God.  It is offered to Him by His priests.  We are given the great peace offering in return through what the grace of God does as the Eucharistic Prayer unfolds.  

This leads to two further things worth pondering.  First, are each of us doing our part in the harvest.  What thanksgiving offering, harvested from your response to God's call to faith, hope, and love did you bring today?  Simply showing up is not enough, for Exodus 23:15 reminds us that no one shows up before God empty handed.  What are you handing to me to be joined to the thanksgiving sacrifice?  In the Roman Canon I will pray later : "Remember, Lord, your servants and all gathered here, whose faith and devotion are known to you.  For them, we offer you, this sacrifice of praise or they offer it for themselves and all who are dear to them..."  What harvest of faith and devotion are you offering, that is joined to mine and the whole Church?  I can not offer what you do not bring. I cannot offer it if you don't come to offer it.  You must do your part in bringing a harvest of the love, faith, and hope you have shown God and each other.

The second thing to ponder is this: As the Mass is the supreme thanksgiving offering, it is necessary that a priest, who acts in union with the Person of Christ, as the intercessor between God and humanity, brings forth that offering.  He in turn acts in the Person of Christ in providing for the lay faithful that which they cannot provide for themselves: The Body and Blood of Christ; we are given our daily bread and our share in the eternal peace offering of the Cross.  As the number of priests continues to go down in our diocese, it will curtail the availability of this exchange of sacrifices to take place.  Sure, you will still have a harvest of thanksgiving which you may well offer to God, but the other necessary sacrifice goes undone and the life that it gives is withheld.  This priest also has another major job connected with Mass, namely, that He gives us the opportunity to receive God's grace to have that thanksgiving sacrifice  made pure by God's grace through absolution of sin; for mortal sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and for venial sins in the Mass itself.  Without this purification of both ourselves and our offering, we court disaster by bringing God a tainted offering or even a blasphemous offering.  Again, without priests, this is made hard if not impossible.

So, yes, we need to pray that God does send more harvesters in the form of priests because of the work that needs to be done.  The sacramental necessities are far from the only things a priest must do in offering to God what is right and just, but in helping us to understand how to better bring a harvest that is worthy before the Lord. We need to pray that God indeed sends more harvesters, but that those called say yes.  That my friends, in so many areas, is not happening.  God forces His will on no one.  They must answer positively.  The lack of response is deafening.  I was stationed in one of the most Catholic areas of not just our diocese, but of the country, at one time.  This county has failed to produce any priestly vocations for this diocese since the foundation for the diocese...nearly 60 years ago.   While it not their fault entirely that we are in the situation we are in as a diocese, it contributes to a decline in the availability of sacraments in this diocese which will get worse before it gets better...if it gets better.  I am not trying to scare you, only stating what is the reality.  Our willingness to pray and encourage is that important.  

The thanksgiving sacrifice will continue on, but where it continues on is up to our ability to hear, answer affirmatively, and give generously.  Pray, then, as the Lord directs, that more laborers may be sent into the harvest.  Be sure, as well, that you bring a harvest collected from the faith, hope, and love you have shown this week.  Be sure as well, that you sacrifice is not tainted by sinfulness.

Worshiping Rhea: How Our Quest for Ease Will be Our Undoing

Rhea , in Greek mythology, was the mother of the gods.  She was associated with comfort and ease. She had no real cult in the time of the Greco-Roman times, but has certainly found one in today's culture.  Ours is not the first culture to be inebriated with the concept of ease.  The Greco-Roman patrician class was all about comfort.  As was the Mandarin Chinese upper class.  In both cases it made them ripe to be destroyed.   It is probably a sure sign of a civilization in collapse that ease and comfort become the goal; it is introducing a cancer into the civilization.

I grew up with the saying being said over and over again, "Nothing in life worth having comes easy."   This didn't mean we were to work until we dropped, but that nothing was ever going to be gained by being a spectator in life.  Ease and comfort could be a good bi-product of hard work, but were to never to be the goal in and of itself.  The nanosecond hard work is frowned upon, a fixation with the trivial with arise in its place.  In that fixation, we become ripe for destruction.

We can see this is society.  Comfort and ease are gods.  Manufacturers, for decades, have strove to make our lives easier and convenient.  It is not a bad intent.  However, to make things easier means that things are not made as well and are largely disposable.  I think back to when I was boy: milk and soda came in reusable glass bottles.  Clothes were line dried.  Very few places had AC.  We used the car when things were not in walking distance (anything over 3 or 4 miles), otherwise we walked or rode our bikes.  Plastic bags were rare, paper bags , which could be used for a multitude of other things and were re-used for shopping again, were the norm.  With all that, less garbage was generated, less energy used, and less chemicals consumed.  Many had vegetable gardens and knew how to grow, can, and preserve their own food.  We were in better shape.  Obesity was rare.  We knew our neighbors and neighborhoods.  I'm not saying there were not problems.  There were.  But now out waste dumps teem with mountains of garbage, we are at the mercy of the food distribution apparatus in our country,  we are isolated behind our front doors and our e-life.  All because ease and convenience became the touchstone of American life.

Ease isn't enough.  The more we worship ease the more it permeates into our lives.  Notice how everything has to be free?  We want everything free!  We want our education, food, housing, clothing, healthcare, and every other single aspect of life for free.  In our country, we have that apparatus in place,  Politicians promise more and more every election cycle.  Over the last several decades it has been like a slow drip IV of cancer introduced into the American psyche.  It is never enough.  The worship of ease will be our undoing as a country.  As it did for the patrician classes and their empires in centuries past, so it will do for us as well: it will lead to our destruction.

Why?  Because the whole enterprise of ease and comfort as an end comes from the deadly sins of pride, sloth, and later greed and gluttony.  Pride, because the whole enterprise has a large degree of selfishness necessary to become so self-consumed that it is everyone else's job to sate me.  The focus is personal comfort.  In this, the person must first focus on the self.  Sloth, because in our pride we believe that effort is not necessary, the natural child of sloth is entitlement.  It is the warping of love: in the theological virtue of love we make the other the focus of our effort, in sloth we make ourselves the focus of other people'e effort.  This toxic combination lead to the birth of an insatiable greed and gluttony.  I am owed!!!!  I didn't develop job skills worth anything. I didn't take education seriously.  But, by the damned, I want to be paid for whatever measly labor I wish to give as if I did these things.  It leads the presupposition that those who have, have because they stole it from me.   Hence envy is brought into our lives.  It becomes the  monster that devastates not just society, but every institution within that society.

Look at what it has done to our families.  It destroys marriage.  If I come into a marriage believing that the job of my spouse is to make me happy, I have stabbed the heart of the marriage from the beginning.  When both spouses believe this, it is the death knell of their union.  In families, it seeps into a belief that the role of the children is to make mom and dad proud; to make it easy for them to provide.  What happens in a marathon of activities in which the child is rushed from one thing to another.  As children want to please parents they play along.  It isn't to the good of the child though. The toxic stew fed them becomes the toxic stew they feed their children. The children, in turn, believe that mom and dad are little more than taxi driver and butlers whose job it is to cater to their every desire.

Nowhere, though, has the worship of comfort and ease been so devastating as to our faith and spirituality.  Before I go much further, I wish to say that the answer is not going to be Pelangianism, a early heresy that taught we could essentially earn our way into heaven by a tough regimen of prayer, mortifications, and works.  This was condemned very early on in Christianity.  The heresy arose in the belief that God's grace was unnecessary.  God's grace is very necessary, but to the person who worships comfort and ease, God's grace will be vilified or redefined so as to slip into the great modern heresy of universalism, a heresy by which everyone effortlessly makes it to heaven...a heaven which is defined by its perpetual self-indulgence...where God is little more than a supernatural butler who lives to please me.  The more one worships ease and comfort, the more one will resent the very concept of God.  It is no wonder that as our society grows in its worship of ease and comfort, the more it grows into a deep antipathy to God...especially the Judeo-Christian God.  The more ease and comfort become gods, the faster our houses of worship will empty out.

This is a tacit awareness though of truth.  Truth is that concupiscence (the desire to sin) makes life difficult.  It is concupiscence that drives us to seek ease and comfort as an end.  Concupiscence leads us to cultivate vice.  Vice is all about ease and comfort.  Why learn to love when one can more easily lust?  Why learn generosity when it is much easier to be greedy? The list goes on.  Our Christian faith is not easy because it means answering God's grace and using it to cultivate virtue.  Virtue looks to put concupiscence in its place and so order the goods of sexuality, nourishment, ease in their proper perspective.  Virtue, though, is about restraining the passions.  That is not easy.  Christianity demands we look beyond ourselves and learn to love others.  In this we seek not to be the object of comfort, but be the means of comfort to others.  We do not seek for others to make my life easier, but for me to make other people's lives easier.  Relationships no longer become what can you do for me, but what can I do for you.

This includes the relationship with God Himself.  Modern faith has been largely defined by a wish for a convenient God.  We want God  to be the bellhop who shows up when summoned.  We want the God that we can find anywhere convenient to our lifestyles.  Prefer fishing and hunting to church?  No problem!  We'll just say we find God in nature and then make a snarky comment about Church to assuage our guilt about being spiritually slothful. Prefer partying and living it up to Church?  No problem!  We'll just say God (if there is God) loves me just as I am and then making a snarky comment about church goers to mask any twinge of guilt I feel about knowingly rejecting God.  This by no means  is to reduce the entirety of faith to going to Church; in fact we do what we do in Church (especially as Catholics) is necessary because of how we are to act for the rest of the week.  The relationship with God cannot be reduced to an hour a week...however that hour a week is as necessary to the development of the relationship with God as eating is to the development of our bodies.  We cannot cultivate the Godly by ignoring the God who is its source.  If Mass is such an imposition to the person, then ease and comfort have completed their stranglehold on the person's soul!

Our faith is an answer to God.  Our lack of faith is an answer to God.  The answer we make to God determines our  eternal fate.  Those who presume heaven to be a right will most certainly find hell their fate.  Those who worship ease and comfort will be denied it for eternity.  Those who were willing to allow the grace of God and their actions to cultivate virtue and relationship with God will find the eternal comfort of heaven.  Ironic isn't it?

In the physical realm, if we want good health and strength, it will come through discipline.  We will have to exercise and eat correctly.  If we fail to do so, believing that sitting on our rear ends and playing video games, watching TV, and eat bad food and believing we will be physically fine will not shield us from bad health.  In the mental realm, if we want to be smarter, that means study and the consumption of intellectual stimuli that will stretch our intelligence. Again, it is a discipline. If we believe merely watching TV and reading junk fiction (like books about glittering vampires as an example) we will grow wiser, then we will find it unable to stem our ignorance on the things that matter.  Remember, tyranny counts on ignorance.  So to in the spiritual realm.  Discipline is necessary. If we truly want heaven, then what we cultivate here and now, vice or virtue, will determine that fate.  God tells us what He wants; for us to love, have faith, build relationship, be holy.  He gave us the Scriptures and the Church so we could know.  It is not as if we have to wonder.  Of course if we cut ourselves off from the Church or reduce the learning of our faith to a relative few years when we are young (unless something more important came up...like leisure activities), then we will not only have to wonder, but will be ripe to be destroyed.  Submission of our wills to God's is hard work, but He gives us His grace to do it.  God will neither do everything for us as we sit back nor will He demand we do it on our own.

If we are to ever recapture greatness, it will be by cultivating virtue. Vice cultivates isolation.  Virtue cultivates relationship.  Vice turns inward.  Virtue turns outward.  Ease and comfort can not be ends in and of themselves.  No, they are the natural byproduct of virtue, as is self-esteem.  So, to my reader, get off your rear end and do the hard work of cultivating virtue, in the mental, physical, and spiritual realms.  The camp I run is all about cultivating virtue.  Pope Benedict XVI once said, "The world offers you comfort.  You were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness!"  Greatness is never achieved by those who worship ease and comfort.

Book Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Mataxas

Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  For those who don't know who he is, you should.  He was man of great faith and knowledge who had the task of calling his beloved country, Germany, out of madness.  Born of the wealthy level of society, born of a traditional family whose morals were strict and whose practice of faith was  mixed.  He made one unconventional move after another feeling compelled by God to rethink the way his German Lutheran heritage lived its faith.  Those moves led him to conspire to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

This biography is actually two biographies: one of Pastor Bonhoeffer and the other of his homeland Germany.  Not only are we given a insight into the man but an insight into how a country could have fallen under the spell of a madman like Adolf Hitler.  Central to both was the German Church which had grown to be a deaf and toothless watchdog.  The lines between faith and nationalism were drawn and one had to chose a side.  Hitler had managed to deftly merge the two for a marriage of convenience to a bride he hoped to dispose of with when the time was right.

In this biography, we are able to see the multiple influences upon him: family, friends, scholars, and faith.  In the last, we see he could not be sated with the status quo; he often would ring a clarion bell to which few, especially within his church, would heed.  We see a man who strove to maintain his Christian witness, even to the moment of his execution.

On the one hand , we are given an insight into the toxic mix of nationalism and vengeance that became Nazi Germany.  We see a people so angered by the ill formed Treaty of Versailles that anyone who could exact revenge would be followed.  We see a people reduced to poverty who were so hungry for a savior, even if that savior was a murderous fiend, they would follow.  We see a country whose political and religious institutions were ill equipped to deal with such frustration.  We see that the churches were already emptying, that faith was more a private devotion, and faith was easily disposed with when a false messiah took the stage.  We are left to gasp at the rise of evil as the world had never seen prior.  We will see that venomous recipe be dumped across the world through war and genocide.

Yet at the same time, we are introduced to Bonhoeffer and his friends and co-conspirators who would not go quietly into that good night.  We see incredible faith and bravery in the cast of characters.  We see a man who knew that faith could not be regulated to the cold pews of a Church, but had to be transported as well into the world at large...that the only way to prevent such evil was to live the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ in the fashion of the Sermon on the Mount.  We see a man and his compatriots who found the Final Solution as evil and something worth laying their own lives down to stop.

The reader is left asking some very disturbing questions about the world today.  The circumstances which allowed for the totalitarianism of National Socialism are still with us.  For us Americans, as we see the tactics of a Saul Alinsky played out (tactics identical in many ways to the rise of the Third Reich) in our society and politics, as we see our society fractured and straw men villains erected for our disapproval, as we see a government who wants us to surrender our freedoms bit by bit, who will be the Bonhoeffers in our midst?  Who will stand and be counted among those who will not allow our society to be dragged into madness?  Who will hold firm on their Christian beliefs and stand against the victimization of entire segments of our society (the unborn for example)?  Who will see what the popes since WWII have begged us to do and live our faith not just for an hour on Sunday, but throughout the rest of the week as well?  Who of us will stand for the unpopular truth, even if it means suffering and sacrifice?  As in the time of Bonhoeffer, we need heroes to arise and stand defiantly courageous!

Mr Metaxas use extensive writings of Bonhoeffer, public and private, to paint not just the man but the world in which he lived.  We see the passage of time and necessity to respond to situations as they devolved.  It is a morality tale as much as a biography.  It is a tale we would do well to listen.

A Most Deadly Affair: The Left and Abortion.

I saw a meme not long ago saying that to the left, abortion is the highest sacrament; on par with the Eucharist with Catholics.  Both have as central to the belief the words, "This is my body." I think it holds true.  For the left, a woman's body is hers to do with as she pleases.  A baby in the womb is seen as a parasite on her body, hence, at the disposal of the woman to do with as she sees fit.  In this scenario, the baby in the womb is not a separate entity deserving of any human rights.  No, its humanity is left to the whim of the woman.  You'll notice I am saying woman and not mother; this is to reflect the beliefs of the left.  For the left, abortion is the fail safe should their other sacraments of sexual promiscuity and birth control not work.  Abortion and artificial birth control have the same root on the left: the deadly love affair they have with eugenics.

What is eugenics you ask?  It is a belief that the survival of the human species depends upon the weeding our of lesser traits.  In his book, "The Descent of Man", Charles Darwin  remarked to his dissatisfaction that humanity was the only species that protected its weak and deficient.  Throw in some Friedrich Nietzsche, and some Margaret Sanger, and you have an explosive movement that  became the philosophical underpinnings of the progressive movement.  It was Margaret Sanger who started using birth control and forced sterilization of those seen as 'weeds' and feeble lesser strains of humanity.  Ms. Sanger was a committed racist.  Her organization started spreading clinics throughout the country and world for the expressed purpose of eliminating the lesser strains; placing most of them in in impoverished and minority neighborhoods.  Her organization is a darling of the left, actually its flagship.  No matter what vile things this group does, no matter how deceptive it is, no matter how it targets minorities, the left will always come to the defense of this group and pour tons of money into it,  I am talking, of course, of Planned Parenthood.

Now, mix this with the fact that progressivism is basically slow cooker socialism.  It is patient socialism.  Instead of revolution, it slowly takes over institutions and becomes the norm.  I invite the reader to reader to read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."  Paramount to socialism is the providing of everything for the underclasses.  This sounds Christian, correct?  Except for the nasty little reason why they want to provide: if one can strip the ability of a person to provide for themselves, one can have absolute control over them.  This is why gun control is also a sacrament of the left.  One does not want a populace that can defend itself against its oppressors.  It is why the government must have control over everything; it must so burden the populace with laws and regulations as to make dependence the only acceptable outcome.

What do you get with such a mixture of progressivism and eugenics?  The power to enforce eugenics with abandon.  Many of the people that progressivism champions will be the first to be effected.    Doubt me?  Study the history of the rise of communism in Russia and the eastern Bloc, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of National Socialism in Germany.  The death tolls from these events are staggering.  That any country who plays with this snake thinks they will be spared is a country that most certainly will be bitten and injected with the worst of venoms!

Both progressivism and eugenics have an antipathy towards Judeo-Christianity.  They have to.  The view of human life and dignity are so polar opposites, that one can not live freely with the existence of the other. What makes Judeo-Christianity so very dangerous is its beliefs that every single human person has an inherent dignity which must be respected and protected because every single human being is loved by God.  The New Testament especially makes clear that love of God and love of neighbor are so intertwined that to do damage against a person, intentional or unintentional, is an offense against God Himself.  To see humanity as a group to divide and conquer, to balkanize, to pick winners and loser is antithetical  to Judeo-Christianity.  This is why the progressives seek to limit free speech (the love affair with hate speech, micro-aggressions, safe zones) as a tool for quieting dissent,  It is why is is perfectly acceptable to dismiss so many of the arguments against eugenics and progressivism  as religious babble and outdated superstitions.  They must!  That's why truth must be a subjective reality, no matter how inane the claims made.  If all things can be reduced to opinion, all the easier to rid themselves the purveyors of objective truth...especially Judeo-Christianity.

I have news for the progressives and eugenicists: you may be able to rack up quite the body count; you have....hundreds of millions.  You will lose however.  You always do.  Hence, those of the Judeo-Christian faiths: DO NOT BACK DOWN FROM THE TRUTH!  Make no compromises with entities who seek your destruction. Be the wall between these jackals and their prey.  It is so sad to see elements of various Judeo-Christian faiths, including entire churches, who have co-opted the Gospel to try and make some hybrid faith in which the principles of progressivism and eugenics can be given a shiny smiley face; a mask that hides their demonic nature.  They are Judases, plain and simple.

Know who we are up against but do not lose sight of our basic premise  that God does love every single person; the destruction of our enemy cannot be our goal, no the conversion of those who count themselves out enemy.  That can be done without conceding a single iota of ground.  It can be done and gain ground.  Let us not lose sight of who wins at he end.

The Church of Piety and the Church of Power

The Roman Catholic Church.  The largest non national entity in the world.  She is made of up of over 1.2 billion adherents spread throughout almost every country in the world.  Her adherents live under every form of human governance and socioeconomic system known to man.  She has been consistently persecuted throughout her 2000 year history.  She has outlived every persecutor.  She has been ruled by saints.  She has been ruled by scoundrels.  She has been in a constant state of  reform.  She is the largest healthcare provider and educator on the planet.  From her came colleges, universities, hospitals, orphanages, social welfare, etc. She is the largest source of charity on the planet.  She has been  praised, pilloried, undermined, and betrayed from the inside, yet she stands tall.   We believe that despite all of this she stands not because of her mere human element, but because of the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus and given at Pentecost.

The Roman Catholic Church is a complex lady.  She is so because she is chock full of human beings; human beings full of grace, human beings full of foibles. Those human beings can grow lax and selfish and then grow selfless and magnanimous.  Our history as a Church reflects these truths.  Our governance reminds us that such a large entity moves, by nature, very cautiously and slowly.  In her governance, the Church Militant (the part of the Body of Christ on earth) has two groups who are in constant and necessary sides of the spectrum: the church of power and the church of piety.

I borrow these terms from author and historian, Rodney Clark, from his recently published book, Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.  In Chapter 9, the chapter on the canard that the Church prefers authoritarian civil governments, he uses these terms to describe the two churches: The Church of Power and the Church of Piety. "The Church of power was the main body of the Church that evolved in response to the immense status and wealth bestowed on the clergy by Constantine." In short, they're the administrators.  The leadership of the church mainly falls into this task.  They are given the duty of the upkeep of the infrastructure necessary to do the work of the Church.  Someone has to maintain the parishes, dioceses, educational systems, and the myriad of other ministries the Church has.  But on their own, they can turn the church into a business.

The Church of Piety, according to Dr. Stark, is what 'pressed for virtue over worldliness and constantly attempted to reform the Church of Power...the task of conversion...of evangelization" was left to the Church of Piety.  If the Church of Power upkeeps the infrastructure, the Church of Piety gives the reason for it to exist.  If the Church of Power can be likened to the body of the Church, so the Church of Piety is its soul.  Much like our own bodies and souls, there can be as usually is tension between them.

Before I go any further, it is worth admitting I really am more of the Church of Piety even though by virtue of my role as pastor, there are times I have to be in the Church of Power.  To tip my hand a bit, I see both parts of the Church Militant as necessary, but I believe the Church of Power is to serve the Church of Piety.  I realize there must be administration, but that the administration serves the ends of the  mission of the Church.  Even in my own administrating of my parish, I believe that the budget should not determine the mission, but that the mission should determine the budget.  Well maintained empty buildings are of little use when not engaged in the mission of the Church.  Balanced budget matter little when the mission of the Church goes unfulfilled in the local area.   However, the mission does require infrastructure.

When one dominates to the exclusion of the other, it rarely works out well.  When the church of power dominates it can become a church fixated on the things of man and not the things of God.  It becomes corrupt.  It is the equivalent of a zombie, a soulless body still moving but actively rotting as it does.  When the church of piety dominates to the exclusion of the church of power, it loses its infrastructure and and become muddled and even fall into heresy.  It can be the equivalent of a ghost,  a cognizant entity with no physical structure in which to operate. 

When the two parts of the Church Militant walk hand in hand, both the work of the Church and the means of this work stride along.  One cannot lose sight that the other is needed.  In fact, both churches should reside in the same person when it comes to leadership within the Church.  Truth be told, the Church has survived without the church of power, but her ability to get about the mission of the Church was hampered in the process.  Being more in the Church of Piety than Power, I can and do get frustrated with the ambition, politics, and even lack of vision of the Church of Power.  They, in turn, can see me as a bit of a loose cannon, a curmudgeon, and as having my head in the clouds.  Fair enough...just as long as we never lose sight as to why the Church exist: to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the conversion and salvation of souls.

The Role of the Priest in Mass

I believe that part of understanding the Mass is understanding what is the role of the priest  is in Mass.  In a concept, he is to act as the Person Christi, the Person of Christ.  Upon his priestly ordination his soul is ontologically changed so that when the ministry demands that he speak in the person of Christ, he may do so, not for his own good, but for the good of those to whom he has been sent to serve.  For example, within the Sacrament of Reconciliation, when the priest speaks the words of absolution, it is not he that forgives, but Christ using him who forgives.  This same idea happens at Mass and informs much of what the role of the priest is during Mass.

In Mass, the priest stands in a crossroads between the world and heaven; he represents God in his role as teacher and priest, he stands before God interceding for the good of his flock.  He brings the prayers of thanksgiving, adoration, penance, and petition before God and brings the grace of God, most powerfully seen in the Eucharistic species to feed his flock.  Of all the parties involved in Mass, is job is specifically to serve both the people and God.  He, himself, is not to be the focus of attention.  One of the less than subtle ways the Church points this reality out is that the priest cannot make up things as he goes a long; a ritual is provided, words are provided, scripture texts are provided.  He is forbidden by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal paragraph 24 from changing any actions, rubrics, or words in the Mass.  This is done to preserve that the Mass is of the Roman Rite and not the Mass of the Fr. Bill (or any priest) Rite. A master changes things, a servant obeys.

The priests has two focuses in the Mass.  There are times when his focus is the flock.  This is especially seen during the Liturgy of the Word where the priest uses the homily as a time of instruction, exhortation, and example to apply the Scriptures to the lives of his flock.  The homily should always have the purpose of drawing the listener into a deeper relationship with Christ.  To misuse the homily as a time for stand up comedy, teaching falsehoods, or putting on a show is criminal; it is poisoning the flock one is called to feed,  A good priest knows that anything he might have to offer will pale as compared to what God has to offer; he will allow the homily to point to God.  In other places in the Mass he stands in the Person of Christ in offering absolution (penitential rite) and blessing to the flock gathered.

The second focus is that of God.  In offering prayers, especially the Eucharistic prayer, he stands before God as the intercessor for the people assigned him.  His priesthood mirrors the priesthood of Christ who is our great intercessor before the Father. It occurs to me that when the people pray for the priest it is at junctures when the priest must give something of God to them, they pray for the priest because he must stand before God in intercession:  first at the beginning of the penitential rite where the priest will be called upon to give absolution for venial sins, second before the priest enters into the Eucharistic Prayer, third when the priest starts the Eucharistic prayer, fourth when the priest extends the peace of Christ, and fifth when he is about to extend God's blessings.  A sixth time is also possible when he is the reader of the Gospel, because he now must give the words of the Gospel to his people.  When the priest is the momentary focus, it is only so that he may be prayed for so that he may worthily carry out what the office of priesthood demands during the Eucharist. At each of these junctures the priest is reminded of his intercessory role and that in that role, his focus must be on God.  One does not ask for something without focusing on the person he is asking.

At that altar, the priest makes present by the power of the Holy Spirit our share in the eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross.  He does not re-enact the Last Supper.  He does not put on a passion play.  In fact, he is to be as transparent as possible, for it is the words of Christ that make what is happening happen.  At that altar, the focus of all in the Church is on Jesus Christ.  In this role the priest must take the attitude of St. John the Baptist, "He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease." In this proper disposition, the priest is not the master of the sacrifice, but the servant of the sacrifice.

I know this gets muddled many times and parishioners can often have to brace for impact every time they get a new pastor or even a fill-in while the pastor is away.  The Church does not want this to happen.  Again, it is why a uniting ritual, with same words and actions, is given.  It is also why the faith of the priest is always on display in Mass.  Through his actions and instruction, through his obedience, he models the life of Christ and exhorts his flock to do so as well.  When the priest makes mass about himself, his wisdom, his stylings, and his tastes he robs the flock of the very thing they have the right to receive in coming to Mass.    Namely, a moment of real contact with the transcendent God who wishes to make Himself known to us.  Woe to the priest who stands in the way of this meeting!  I cannot point to God and myself at the same time without making myself a God! No, priests within the Mass are to point away from themselves just as Jesus pointed away from Himself and to the Father...just as Mary pointed away from herself and towards God.  Because the Mass is supposed to be the place where we get the grace necessary to live the life of Christ, we can never allow Christ to be ignored or placed in a secondary place.  The priest has the ability to place the focus where it need be or steal the spotlight for himself.  Pray that any priest will never usurp the attention owed God for himself!