Enough is Enough?

Eager to Please

The Canadian Archdiocese of Moncton has expanded a policy requiring that all Catholics aged over 12 show proof they have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine in order to enter a  church - even while the provincial government has not required houses of worship to effect those policies. - The Pillar

"Even while the provincial government has not required houses of worship to effect those policies...".

And, for Saint John... .

“No person will be turned away from Mass, nor any other Sacrament,” Natasha Mazerolle, communications director for the Diocese of Saint John, told CNA Sept. 22. New provincial rules requiring proof of vaccination will, however, apply to other indoor events at diocesan churches, like conferences, workshops and fundraisers, she said.

“The Diocese of Saint John continues to do its utmost to protect both the physical and spiritual needs of its faithful,” said Mazerolle. “It takes the directives of public health seriously and understands the need to make sacrifices to protect the common good, and to be prudent in slowing the spread of the virus. It also recognizes that the faithful are not to be excluded from the Sacraments for any reason, and that the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith (and indeed what is most needed to help us face these challenging times).”

Mazerolle said “worship services (including Catholic Mass) are not directly mentioned in the government regulation.” She added “an individual’s right to practice their religion is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

[...]

Under canon law, well-disposed Catholics typically have the right to receive the sacraments at appropriate times.

“The Code of Canon Law is very clear on this,” said Mazerolle, citing canon 843, which says, “Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.”

Despotic Ends

Once the word, as it is employed by the communications media, has, as a matter of principle, been rendered neutral to the norm of truth, it is, by its very nature, a ready-made tool just waiting to be picked up by “the powers that be” and “employed” for violent or despotic ends.

(Josef) Pieper is saying that once language is detached from any greater reality, it becomes a weapon in the hands of the powerful for the manipulation and the abuse of others. When we consider this in light of Nietzsche’s observation on God and grammar, a rather grim truth becomes evident: The abolition of grammar merely changes one authority for another. The old God might be held to his (pardon the phrase) word, as reflected in reality. The new gods are but raw power writ large, unattached to anything beyond themselves. Ironically, that means that the thing Nietzsche feared above all—the herd mentality and its mindless morality—is precisely what will emerge, because the individual has nothing with which to resist the power of the strong. That is what we are witnessing in the unthinking rush to specify pronouns among people who have never considered their bodies to be unreliable guides to their gender.

The battle over pronouns on social media and in public spaces, as trivial as it seems, is actually of great importance. The abandonment of reality that queer ideology demands may be marketed as nothing more than sensitivity toward the feelings of others, but in fact it is imposing a view of the relationship between language and reality that makes the latter nothing more than a function of the former. And the reason it is being pressed with such force is because it is a bid for power by those who deem any and all categories oppressive except those they invent themselves. They hate reality. And they hate the God who made that reality and the grammar and syntax by which it is expressed. Nietzsche knew it; it is a shame that some Christians seem rather confused on the matter.

And as for politicians who despise those who believe in a God-given reality: You can take my grammar and dictionary from me when you tear them from my cold, dead hands. - Carl Trueman, Clinging to God and Grammar/First Things