Chasm
There are an infinite number of ways that COVID changed the way in which we live our lives. Though we find ourselves four years removed from the initial outbreak, and more than two years from the return to normal, visages of those early days are still with us, regrettably even at the Mass.
The laity and the priesthood had dramatically different experiences of lockdown. While the church doors were locked, we were prevented from physically receiving the Eucharistic Lord. Although we could rely on solid theology around the idea of a spiritual communion, none of that theology suggests that a spiritual communion is in any way a substitute to the physical presence of our Lord residing within us.
Many priests and bishops went to great lengths to bring the Eucharist Lord to their flocks, through Eucharistic processions in our neighborhoods, and some even taking to the sky to bless the faithful. Though admirable and deeply appreciated in the fog of those days, there’s nothing that can satiate our burning desire to be physically united to the Lord, as He too desires. While we were physically separated from Him, the priests continued to receive Him daily.
It’s difficult for them to know the pain that we felt, unable to return to our parishes, worship God, and receive His strength in our time of need. There’s no doubt that being separated from their flocks was difficult for our priests and bishops, but they had the consolation of our Lord, truly present within them.
That was the reality of those days, and it would be wrong to begrudge our priests the privilege that they possessed in one of the most challenging times in our collective lives. What is wrong, however, is for the restrictions implemented in the spring of 2020 to continue today, precluding the full participation of the laity in the daily life of the Church.
I live in a diocese where the bishop has not reinstituted the reception of the Precious Blood by the faithful. This was one of the earliest changes made to the liturgy in March 2020, and why it continues to this day is baffling.
It’s stipulated that the true presence, even under a single species, is the full and complete Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus. God is indivisible; He is complete, whole, and total, no matter how we receive Him. It’s also true, however, that at the first Mass, Jesus first broke the bread, and then took the cup, telling us to this in memory of Him. This is noteworthy because although one species would be sufficient, His intent was that we receive Him under both species.
The Eucharist is today, as it has been since its institution, deeply scandalous. From the first time that Jesus proposed it, many of His followers went away, never to return. Today, only the Roman Catholic Church, and those in union with it, still possess the true presence. Many Protestant denominations celebrate “communion,” but regard it as perfunctory and performative, a simple commemoration that is merely an adjacent practice of their faith.
Though the theology of the Eucharist is among the hardest to accept, Jesus was unequivocal; the Eucharist is truly His body and truly His blood. Through it, He seeks to nourish His flock in an encounter that is both exclusive and deeply intimate. At the altar, we are fed, and we receive Him physically into our bodies, becoming living tabernacles. Like the love shared between spouses, this is an exclusive experience, reserved for the relationship between the true and living God and His people.
The excessive bureaucracy and clericalism in the Catholic Church that Pope Francis so derided in the early days of his papacy has only grown more entrenched under his reign. COVID broke many things, and though perhaps understandable in the early days, perpetuating this policy of denial is deeply unjust and an affront to the spiritual health and wellbeing of the faithful.
Our priests need the full grace and benefit of our Eucharist Lord to strengthen them to fulfill the high calling of their vocation in the midst of a broken, dark, and hostile world. So, too, do the laity.
Unraveled
For the entire existence of humanity, there has been a singular experience that unites us. No matter the time, geolocation, cultural surroundings or economic environment, human reproduction was universally recognized as an essential good. The gradual transition from child to adult to parent was a natural progression that was something to be celebrated. Not only did it denote a degree of maturity, but was also a sign of growing wisdom. The student truly becoming the master.
Parenthood is not experienced by all adults for many reasons that are valid. There are those who biologically do not have the faculties to naturally conceive or bear a child. There are also those called to the single state to serve the community in specialized ways.
Where things start to unravel is when the natural desire to parent a child is suppressed by selfishness. This can be either through immoral end runs around biological shortcomings or, a conscious decision to intentionally avoid parenthood.
Social media trends flaunt the dual-income no-kids trend, where two married people decide not to welcome the gift and responsibility of a child so that they can live as they choose. They shower themselves in luxury, fill their homes with pets, and delude themselves into thinking this is somehow a life worthy of living.
While deeply sad, the unraveling of this universal human experience represents a core sickness in society. It’s the acceptance of the idea that a child’s life, their existence, presents an obstacle to happiness or fulfillment. This is dangerous.
Parenting is a difficult task, requiring daily concentration, focus, and dedication. As a child grows, they frequently act in a way that goes against their own best interests. Parents must lovingly, firmly, and consistently offer correction so that, by the time the child reaches adulthood, they have the tools and boundaries to thrive independently.
The responsibility for a child is the most essential loving gift that we can gift. No matter how imperfectly given, it’s also the gift that we ourselves have already received. May we endeavor to rise above ourselves, setting aside our needs for the needs of those entrusted to us.
Trailhead
Three hundred and sixty-five days later, we find ourselves at another trailhead. The new year holds a great deal of symbolism in our world, although in reality it’s just another day. The beauty, though, of the special meaning to which we assign it, is that it’s another reminder of our call to constant renewal.
Pulling out our pen and paper, we sit down to list our resolutions. We turn our thoughts back to the person that we want to become, the life we ought to live. Plans are great things, but life doesn’t move in a linear fashion. Demands on our time, focus, and attention ebb and flow. Major projects, illnesses, and even just a bad night’s sleep knock us little by little off course. Slowly, over time, we deviate further and further from our objective, eventually looking up to see that we’re way off course.
Contending with life as we fight to live as we ought to is at the heart of constant renewal. God doesn’t expect us to radically change ourselves once and then live perfectly forever more. He knows and understands the struggle, the conflict, and that small corrections each day add up to big results over time.
We’re at a new trailhead: January 1, 2024. Win, lose, or draw, what tiny choices do we need to make each day this year to be closer to the person that we ought to be when we all meet back here on January 1st next year?
Stillness
The Jewish people anticipate a great messianic return. Elijah tore off to Heaven on a chariot of fire, and he was merely a prophet! In ancient Israel, under the yoke of Roman occupation, the entire Jewish nation pined for the freedom the Messiah would bring and for the promise of the Covenant fulfilled.
Despite the anticipation, from the moment and manner of His birth, Christ sought to conform our wills to His. No triumphant return, but a common birth to a family with no title or land, all from a backwater town long forgotten by even the shadow Jewish government. Can anything good come from Nazareth? He was born in an anonymous cave, long forgotten by history, and welcomed by a few dirty shepherds.
There were no royal messengers dispatched to the four corners of the kingdom announcing the birth of the new king, no festival organized for days of celebration. There was only the total stillness of a dark winter’s night deep in the country.
It was the opening salvo in a ministry that sought to reorganize the world from top to bottom. A violent global population that only focused on survival and expanding temporal power was challenged by the message of Jesus. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.
The message is simple. Though our hearts may yearn to be known, respected, desired, honored, praised and consulted, the slave is not greater than his master. We are called to live simple, quiet lives, fulfilling the high duty of our vocation, loving those around us, and walking in Christ’s footsteps, from the hill country of Bethlehem to the rock of Golgotha.
Counterfeit Sacrament
It’s been quite the comedown from the moral clarity of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. John Paul stood up to the evils of the communist system and ignited a rediscovery of the beauty and holiness of the human body. Benedict, both as a bishop and then as pope, wielded the sword of truth and the intellectual strength of the Church to destroy the falsehoods that press in on us. They weren’t perfect, and they made many mistakes. Still, they endeavored to ensure that their every word and action was used for the edification of the Church and the salvation of souls.
Then, there’s Francis.
Centuries ago, St. Francis heard the voice of God and rebuilt by hand the Church of San Damiano. Then, he formed a religious institution that began a much-needed renewal of the Church. Today, Pope Francis works ardently to undo his namesake’s good work.
In the 1960s, medical technology openly began to falsely promise that it could provide reliable contraception. The World gave an inch, and libertine society took a mile. Contraception promised that you could control your creative powers with no effort, no thought, no discipline, and no self-control. It promised freedom, control, and bliss; what we got was absolute misery and total dysfunction. Contraceptives are the only application of medicine wherein the sole intent is to disable an otherwise healthy and functioning system. The society of selfishness, hatred, and violence that contraceptives built was predicted by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, to a point.
The libertine society returned soon thereafter to open a new front on marriage. Two decades ago, they promised that they just wanted legal protections for irregular relationships. The World gave an inch, another mile was taken. Marriage, to the common man, now means nothing. Marriages are entered and exited with little thought, discernment, or seriousness. This is a dangerous development because the family is the basic unit of society; without the family, society collapses.
Today, in the midst of the smoke, fog, and confusion around marriage comes Francis, shrouded in the authority of his office, wearing the distinctive white robe of the papacy, to place a bomb right in the middle of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
The Church has many expressions of faith, but only seven sacraments. These are outward signs, instituted by Christ, to give grace. Six of the Sacraments are celebrated by an ordained priest or deacon. Holy Matrimony is the only one in which the laity are the celebrants. When a man and woman come together at the altar to make their mutual promises and seal their covenant, they confer the sacrament on one another; the priest’s role is solely to witness and bless the marriage.
The Catholic Church recognizes the human person as God’s greatest creation. Intrinsically included in that recognition is the beauty and sanctity of the human body. God granted us a share in His creative powers through our ability to procreate. It’s from this understanding that the Church can recognize when use of our creative powers is good and holy, and when it is wrong. Human sexuality is an essential good inside of marriage because it binds the couple together and, when physiological circumstances are correct, leads to the loving creation of new life. Our creative powers can be studied, observed, and mastered. Indeed, we’re called to be stewards of our creative powers, exercising them judiciously for the greater good.
Sexual activity outside of marriage is always wrong because it contradicts the design and intent of our creative powers. When used outside of marriage, it’s no longer an authentic loving and giving expression, but rather it seeks to serve only itself.
Francis’ new guidelines are a logical fallacy. Though he claims to do them out of pastoral concern, he focuses only on blessing the relationships of same-sex couples. What about cohabitating couples? What about polyamorous relationships? What about polygamous relationships? What about sexual relationships between adults and children? After all, these relationships may too, to quote Cardinal Fernandez in Francis’ guidelines, “desire to entrust themselves to the Lord and his mercy, to invoke his help, and to be guided to a greater understanding of his plan of love and of truth.” Not so pastoral after all.
The truth is, what Francis and his band of tinkerers have done is institute a blessing that cannot be given. They’ve created a counterfeit sacrament. It looks like a marriage, it sounds like a marriage, but it isn’t one. They offer to the world what they cannot give; they promise what they cannot fulfill.
Although they stress the blessings of irregular relationships can only be granted if it’s clear that it’s not a marriage blessing, this is a true distinction without a difference. Francis is not oblivious to the lack of moral, logical, and philosophical education in the world today. He knows precisely how this will be received and interpreted by the vast majority of Catholics who can barely rouse themselves to make it to Mass twice a year. Worse still, how those who have not had the benefit of a Catholic education will receive this news.
In the face of reality, Francis presses forward with his intellectual pogrom. Any bishop or cardinal who dares speak out against this falseness is dismissed from their office and evicted from their home.
The Church exists to ensure the salvation of souls; that is its mission. It stores up grace, guarantees apostolic succession, provides the faithful with validly ordained priests, and assures access to the Sacraments. Its unwavering positions on faith and morals are not some obstinate adhesion to an outmoded and outdated way of thinking. Rather, it’s the culmination of 2,000 years of deeply thinking about and clarifying a basic set of principles. For those of us on earth, the Church is the lighthouse guiding us away from the cliffs and into the safe harbor.
What Francis proposes, as he willfully continues on his campaign of moral confusion, is to set the lighthouse adrift, where it can blink and float wherever the current takes it. The problem is that a lighthouse afloat helps no one. Many, many will be lost to the cliffs as a direct result of the words and actions of this papacy.
Yet, each time Francis pulls out his sledgehammer to destroy another cleric or another part of the Magisterium, irony abounds. This latest pronouncement comes near the end of Advent. A great star has risen. The people who walk, and live, in darkness have seen a great light. A savior is born, the great I AM, the king of kings, and He is the way, the truth, and the life. While we await the arrival of the bridegroom, we must continue to speak with the moral clarity that even the pope himself cannot seem to find.
This is wrong.
Some Greater Glory
Hopelessness is poison for the soul. With nothing to look forward to in the future, man starts to unravel. Slowly, we give up on reality, sinking into ourselves, captives to boredom. We lose the will to impose any sort of discipline on ourselves or self-control.
We live in a world that our ancestors could’ve never imagined. Every single fact is accessible to us from a single website, carried on a super computer in our pocket. We have years worth of entertainment options to choose from on our televisions, yet we usually just end up scrolling for hours instead. Food is plentiful and easily summoned to our front doors with a press of a button.
There’s nothing wrong with comfort or advancement, we’ve conquered many of the natural foes that killed our ancestors before they reached the age of 30. But we’ve lost our desire to achieve some greater glory.
Glory in ancient times was often found in battle. Seeking it, men marched to foreign lands, though a large number died of communicable diseases before taking the field. They braved harsh weather, rough terrain, scant food, and the great unknown, all to achieve glory for their name and their family. They endured all trials because they knew they had a purpose.
The softness and laziness of the modern era has sedated us, making us unwilling to pursue any objective or destiny. The path to sainthood is hard, so why start?
We need that higher purpose to call us on, to fulfill our true purpose, and to grasp that glory. We need to wake up.
Just War
As advanced as we all like to think we are, even in this post-modern era, still struggle with the same essential flaws. Though we long for peace, and the social and economic prosperity that it brings, conflict is a central theme in the human story. Wherever there are two or more people, there will be differences of opinion and, thus, conflict.
Modern technology has made war more precise. Laser guided weapons, GPS satellites, and a professionalized military allow for the brunt of the force to be focused on the intended target. Collateral damage, when desired, can largely be avoided.
Although armed conflict should always be a last resort, it’s a lawful tool for the defense of a nation. There are circumstances when, for the defense of innocents and the survival of a nation, war must be prosecuted.
When that point is reached, when ethical and moral justifications are present, there is no point to a restrained or proportional response. Instead, the only true choice is to eliminate the threat through a precise, targeted, and intensive military action.
The terrorist attack on Israel earlier this year, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, are the two latest examples of a just war. Israel and Ukraine did not start the fight, but they have the unequivocal right and moral justification to end it, with extreme prejudice.
Aslan’s Roar
The Chronicles of Narnia are legendary in their own right, a series of books worthy of sparking the imagination of any young reader. As noted before on this blog, they also make for a profound spiritual experience reading them as educated adults.
CS Lewis masterfully translated the genius and mystery of God into a story that is so relatable and comprehensible. It’s a story filled with beautiful imagery, like Aslan strolling across the vast darkness, singing the world into existence through beautiful melody.
Throughout the series, we see Aslan close at hand and seemingly far off. The forces of good and evil are in a constant struggle, at various times each gaining the upper hand. When the children are drawn back to Narnia in Prince Caspian after just one year away in England, they stumble into the ruins of their ancient castle. The story of their existence disputed as fanciful nursery tales.
Whenever the forces of evil are on the march, and victory in their grasp, Aslan always returns in great glory. With a single roar, he marks a return to reality as the force of his voice destroys all who oppose him.
Lewis took the time, in each story, to explore the different dynamics of Christology, from Genesis to Revelation. We see him creating the world and, in his absolute power, crushing evil. The truth in this power is that, though we see evil on the march in our time, and injustice abound, Christ is never far off, ready to herald in a return to reality, the world in which He has already conquered death and reigns supreme.
It’s an honor and a privilege to be counted among Christ’s followers, a side that, though always purportedly on the verge of total defeat, instead exists in the reality in which total victory is already achieved.
Moment of Conversion
Life is a series of checkpoints, moments along the path that lead us to our final destination. In our Christian life, many of these checkpoints are moments of conversion. The culmination of perseverance and hard work, winter breaks, and you experience that fresh, new spring.
These moments are profound times of spiritual insight. We get a taste of the reality we were designed to exist in. Our understanding of our faith, and the wisdom of loving God’s law, is crystal clear. Temptation bounces off us, and an effervescence permeates all aspects of our day.
Those they may be fleeting, grabbing hold of these turning points is critical. We are large ships, and turning is never easy. Incremental progress is the tried and true way to success. Although we may get down the path and lose sight of these lampposts, they remain touchpoints that we always return to. For in these moments, these short periods of time, we live as who we were made to be.
Breaking Faith
It’s challenging to remember the feelings we experienced at the election of Pope Francis. A total wild card, a true Vatican outsider, swept onto the world stage and took the Chair of St. Peter by storm. It was, in some ways, a bit refreshing. Pope Benedict XVI was deeply intellectual, providing the theological underpinnings that we need to sustain the faith. Still, we longed for the charismatic and energetic days of Pope John Paul II.
In those early days, Francis lamented the parochial clericalism. He dispensed with bestowing the rank of Monsignor on priests as a sign of gratitude for their good works. He asked us to go out and make a mess in our dioceses. Indeed, in this regard, he’s truly practiced what he’s preached.
Over the last decade, under the influence of living at the Curia, Francis has become a creature of the Vatican. He’s become exactly who he asked us to reject. He wields administrative law against his opponents, and uses the media as a tool of his decidedly ideological agenda.
The first few off-the-cuff remarks to the press that caused a stir could be understood. As a local bishop in Argentina, his media profile was a fraction of the attention that the pope receives. Now, ten years on, it’s his preferred method of stirring the pot. He knows the weight of papal words, even in casual settings, and has used them to move the ball down the field.
At the root of it all, the main problem is that Francis intentionally sows confusion. The Catholic Church is the only organized institution existing today that existed in the same format during the days of the Roman Empire. Why? It’s a ship steered by certain fundamental, immutable principles that keep it on course.
In many ways, Pope Francis is the quintessential theocratic political operative. He grants the Chinese Communist Party the co-authority to appoint bishops, and shrugs when they bypass him anyway. He creates counterfeit sacraments, but admonishes the clergy to only use them if they won’t be confusing. Francis calls an entire conference of bishops who dare question his agenda “backwards” and “reactionary.” He tells the world that our understanding of faith and morals “evolves.” He makes promises that no pope can ever make good on, and then winks when he inevitably cannot deliver.
Throughout Church history, there are many periods when the Church falls into disrepair, and the responsibility to right the ship falls to those outside of the highest echelons of authority. As the ironies pile up, one of the most clear examples is the life of St. Francis himself. Constant reform is the way of the Christian life, and it falls to the vibrant religious communities and the laity to rebuild God’s Church. We find ourselves in need of a new St. Francis to repair the inestimable damage wrought by Pope Francis.