But Not Of It

The Roman Catholic Church never was, nor is she, nor will she ever be a democratic institution. The Magisterium cannot be entrusted to democratic procedures. Christ was not elected the Church’s head: he is her founder and master. - The Church Is Not a Democracy by Chilton Williamson Jr. at Crisis Magazine

Years before being received into the Catholic Church, I witnessed how protest and rebellion defined and compromised the mainline Protestant community in which I was (validly) baptized. Other non-Catholic communities I attended prior to having been received into the Church were equally compromised by: divorce and remarriage (adultery); tacit approval of cohabitation (fornication); loss of Apostolic teaching about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ (heresy), the Real Presence; and so on.

John 17:9; 16

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

While parents and pastors of my birth-community rightly required conformity to high and healthy standards of behaviour consonant with the Gospel, it was impossible for me, as I gradually encountered the mere facts of history, which included the Church's foundation upon Saint Peter by Christ Jesus, to take seriously a "christian" community that resisted (and continues to resist) the Master's will for His Church, i.e., that all may be one! Furthermore, a community claiming to be Christian, though in practice and by its teaching indistinguishable from secular (progressive) Canadian society, is no Christian community at all.

The greater threat to people of genuine faith and conscience comes not from the state but from those pretenders who use a title - Christian - but are in fact liberal religionists, i.e., mainline Protestants. That is, adherents to a man-made religion. That is, collaborators with a state and society hostile to people of genuine faith.

1 John 2:15-17

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

There can be little doubt, given the many visible effects that include rebellion against the legitimate authority Christ set in place for His Church, that Protestantism is merely an umbrella for man-made religion. Being man-made and therefore highly prone to worshiping a small and violent god who, for example, devours the unborn and sacrifices sexual innocence on the altar of tolerance and comfortable religion, the complicit communities of the Reformation will continue to divide internally and divide the societies they so perfectly mimic.

The relativistic doctrines of the Reformers, principally sola scriptura and sola fides (which is expressly rejected in the Epistle of Saint James, Chapter 2 Verse 24), opened a door to rebellion, the rejection of legitimate authority and to every form of loose play with doctrine. The threat to the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Church by relativism and its offspring progressivism, militant secularism and a host of other cheap theories, can be attributed to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli et al.

Ken Hensley at the Coming Home Network underscores the difficulty with the sola scriptura doctrine by citing St. Vincent of Lerins. Saint Vincent said

I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and, so to speak, universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity. I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or any one else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they arise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

Anticipating that some would respond, “But isn’t the Bible enough?” Vincent continues,

But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? For this reason: because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various errors, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

Protestant doctrine by and large fosters rebellion by enabling a person to become a confused law unto himself, which results in Krisjuns (which look like ducks but act like pagans) attempting to wield power over Scripture which leaves men severed from reality and prisoners of their own self-serving and contradictory laws. Saint Thomas Aquinas observed

It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.

Piazza Mercatello durante la peste del 1656

Zombie apocalypse alert!

The relativism of the Protestant Reformers has enabled a rabid soul-killing monster, a plague - political correctness. Political correctness, a power-driven anti-culture, has seriously corroded society and has grown into a wildfire that consumes all that is healthy. This is not news to those who do not belong to the PC mob. Political correctness is devouring innocence, enabling every kind of atrocity against life and human sexuality, suppressing free speech and other inalienable rights. The minions of political correctness, by pouring contempt on anyone who dares to suggest that faith illumines reason, confirm themselves as actors for a diseased religion.

Faith and reason - the twin swords capable of killing the Hydra of political correctness - are pitted against each other as opposites by militant secularists, a.k.a. liberal progressives who are the ministers of the religion of political correctness.

Any serious student of history knows that, contrary to the propaganda one typically encounters in the mainstream secular press, the Catholic Church was and is the guarantor that reason remains part of the conversation: Augustine; Aquinas; Wojtyła; Ratzinger; the list is vast. Universities, first established by Catholics to promote the pursuit of knowledge of the natural and supernatural orders, have largely forgotten the harmony between faith and reason.

People of faith, i.e., Catholics, are the servants of reason, not its jailer. The yardstick of history dismantles attempts to divide faith and reason. The agnostic need only turn to that magnificent document of Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, which reads in part:

Thomas (Aquinas) recognized that nature, philosophy's proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”; and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice.

The Church is a threat to those whose "arguments" cannot withstand the pressure of reason. Anyone who opposes the latest snakehead that emerges from the body of that liberal serpent known as political correctness is pilloried in a kangaroo court of public opinion and too often in university lecture halls where all ideas, especially those challenging the status quo, are supposed to be tested in a fair and organized manner.

What, then, in the midst of such a harsh environment, are Catholics to do? We do as the saints do: trust in God and work unfailingly to share that trust in God with those willing to listen. That trust will shield us from despair; that trust offers modern men and women the opportunity to be absolved of their narrow view of reality and protects them from falling into error and oblivion.

If ever there was a time when man needed to be reminded that God is infinitely more powerful than any creature, and that He really does hear and answer prayers, it is now. Our deepest need can be summed up in that beautiful and brief prayer bequeathed to us through Saint Faustina:

Jesus, I trust in Thee!

Demons tremble at this prayer, and no earthly minion of the devil can overcome the hope, joy, charity and love of a person whose confidence is sustained and magnified by that little prayer. It is a seed; a mustard seed. Mustard seeds, as you know, grow into tremendous things (Matthew 13:31–32; Mark 4:30–32; and Luke 13:18–19). It is also a lightning bolt that slices through the darkness of ignorance, arrogance, entitlement and despair.

We need not fear those who attempt to silence us by using the state or media or institutes of higher learning to bully citizens into submission. No human ideology can stand up to the Word Incarnate and those whom He chooses to call His friends. If we want to be His friends, we must keep His commandments (John 14:15) and surrender our lives to Him. The Holy Ghost will give us the words  (Luke 12:12) we need when we encounter the sons and daughters of the adversary.

Jesus, I trust in Thee!

There it is again, that little prayer enabling in our souls an open window to God, a opening through which the Holy Spirit shines wisdom into our hearts and minds. Perhaps that window is a wound, a wound that is precisely an avenue for God through which He may soften a man's ossified heart and pour into it His soul-saving grace. Christ, the wounded Messiah risen from the dead, knows all our wounds. Our wounds become His wounds when we place all our trust in Him, the One Who has reconciled the world to Himself, the One Who saves us from sin and death and restores us to life.

Jesus, I trust in Thee!

Our briefest 'yes' to God could be summed up with another word: Amen. So be it. May our trust in Jesus be accompanied by our 'Amen' to God's will for us.

God will birth new saints capable of leading additional lost souls to the truth, goodness and beauty of the Holy Gospel. And, because those saints are immersed in the will of God, that is how society will be transformed and brought back to the harmony of faith and reason.