You Say You Want A Revolution

There are plenty of reasons these days to be upset, disgusted, angry, or frustrated. The news is concerning, to say the least.

Bätzing Crazy: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/bishop-batzing-kirchentag

In his latest salvo to challenge Rome's authority, the president of Germany’s bishops’ conference has said that any German Protestant who wishes to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church on Ökumenischen Kirchentag — a day of Christian unity in May — may do so.

“Anyone who is Protestant and attends Communion can receive Communion,” Bishop Georg Bätzing told an online discussion in Frankfurt on Thursday about the May 15 event that usually brings thousands of Christians to the city for ecclesial events.

“We want to take steps towards unity,” he said, adding that “whoever believes in conscience what is celebrated in the other denomination will also be able to approach [the altar] and won’t be rejected.”

Comment: Besides rejecting papal authority, Vatican II recognized that the Protestant Churches "have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic Mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the Sacrament of Holy Orders" ("Decree on Ecumenism," No. 22). For this very reason, the sharing of Holy Communion between Protestants and Catholics is not possible (Catechism, No. 1400).

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/who-can-receive-communion.html

Radicals in the Church - heterodox and pseudo-traditionalists - are dragging around their brothers and sisters as if Christ had not instituted an authoritative hierarchy to shepherd us. Those same radicals pretend to authority. Self-proclaimed messiahs, they trade in power above all else.

If people are looking to change the Church, there are only two ways: one of sinful pride; and the other of humility. One that leads to disastrous deformation and fragmentation, and the other to gradual, even painfully slow renewal that conserves unity in the truth. The way of Luther and disintegration, or the way of Francis of Assisi and rebuilding God's Church (brick by brick).

In the late 1960s, those heady post-Vatican II days when Catholics and non-Catholics alike were made allergic to authority by half-baked literary pundits and musicians married to rebellion, the Beatles released a 1968 social commentary in song, perhaps a tacit admission of their part in enabling relativism and the downward slide into anarchy.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's going to be alright
Alright, alright

When would-be reformers promote change that amounts to destruction of the good along with the bad, faithful Catholics should respond "you can count me out".

You say you want a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan

You ask me for a contribution

Well, you know

We're doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate

All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's going to be alright

Alright, alright

The preceding verse should command the attention of protesters advocating the destruction of civil society. To anyone advocating hate under the guise of social justice, thereby creating new injustices, the fair-minded should say "brother you have to wait". As in, stop what you are doing and follow a better plan, a real solution that doesn't rob people of their lives and their inalienable rights.

You say you'll change the Constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead

But if you carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

You ain't going to make it with me anyhow

Don't you know it's going to be alright

Alright, alright

Alright, alright...

Real change begins with individuals taking personal responsibility for their own actions. The Church is holy, but who this side of heaven can claim to be 100% spotless? (cf Romans 3:23-24 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.). To conform the mind to Truth, to the Holy Gospel, is to free the mind. Conversely, conforming one's life to a monstrous ideology, represented in the song by the reference to Chairman Mao, is the way of death.

The Great Leap Forward 大躍進 (instituted by Mao during the years 1958 to 1962) resulted in tens of millions of deaths, with estimates ranging between 15 and 55 million deaths, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest in human history.

As Fr. Z would say - go to confession! That's where real change begins: individual change; family change; societal change. Real change is possible; conversion of the heart and mind is necessary. The more one conforms himself to the will of God, the more he disposes himself to God's grace, the more he is immersed in hope, the hope God desires to pour into the receptive heart oriented to the truth, goodness and beauty of God. How do we know if we are following the will of God? Christ promised the Holy Spirit to guide the Church into the Truth. As Catholics we can be confident that the Magisterium of the Church confirms us in the Truth.