Editorial (05/29/08)

The Obedience of Hell

            The way to hell is disobedience. The way to salvation is obedience, namely, to Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore we know that chaos, like noise, reigns in hell, and perfect order, like harmony, in heaven.

Yet there is a hierarchy in hell, and each must submit to the next of greater power. This is not the loving and mutual surrender of wills proper to supernatural charity, but rather the abusive power of control and dominion.

In this context, let us reflect on the state of the Church in America, and analogously in the whole world, in our day.

The Change of Guard

There was a time when the body of laity at large were obedient, and the priests and bishops were obedient, too. Without getting too idyllic or bucolic, imagining a utopian past which exists no where but in sentimentality, as there have always been problems with both the laity and the clergy, we can all admit that there was a time when to be Catholic was one thing, and the question “…but what kind of Catholic?” never needed to follow; and this was because of the unity and harmony which humble obedience brought.

Over the last fifty years, if I discern correctly from the historical record, many men who stood as pastors revealed their disobedient hearts. Throwing aside norms of morality and of liturgy, as teenage rebels rejecting “stupid rules,” not only did they themselves perpetrate many scandals, but they taught the faithful to do the same.

These same faithful obediently did as their priests and bishops told them. What did they tell them? Many lies. They said that they were not allowed to receive communion on the tongue. That divorce and remarriage could be resolved in the internal forum. That certain sexual sins weren’t sins. That confession wasn’t necessary. That we didn’t believe any more, ever since Vatican II, in purgatory or the Virgin Birth or in mortal sin. That every religion is the same, and so is every god. That eternal happiness was to be obtained here on this earth. These liars we will give a name: liberals. (I admit the word “liberal” is a very Catholic word and can have a fabulously beautiful meaning, but in our day and age it has been hijacked; and it is to this hijacked meaning to which I now refer.)

Some saw the lie for what it was; and of these, many left the Church, others said “who cares” and ran with it all, and only few took the martyrs’ road of Judas Maccabaeus. Many more didn’t see the lie, and swallowed the hook with the worm. That is, the liberal pastors made the large body of the faithful astoundingly disobedient. The liberal pastors undermined the entire foundation of obedience.

Strangely, these same liberal pastors demanded obedience from those whom they made disobedient. For example, they denied the faithful their right to receive communion on the tongue or kneeling, and would even humiliate them into conforming to “norms” (in this case, mandatory reception of communion in the hand) with unparalleled ruthlessness and rigidity. Hypocritically, they accused the “old Church” and everyone who loved the traditions of Her of being, well, “rigid,”  filled with Carl Roger’s profoundly perverse psychological theories.

I myself have been in the unpleasant position time and time again of contending with liberal pastors of varying degrees of Holy Orders who have attempted to oblige me to be “obedient,” demanding conformity, in the least of cases, to their own whims, or in the worst of cases, to flagrant disobedience against Rome. They said to me this idea in more cunning words: “I oblige you under obedience to disobey.” I mean come on: since when have liberals every been champions of obedience? Only when they learned they could use it as a tool to ruin the fidelity of good Catholics.

An Assessment of the Results

The price the laity have had to pay has been huge. It has cost many their faith, and this perhaps to a vast majority which no liberal priest or bishop would ever want to admit. It has cost lots of money for the building of Churches “uglier than sin.” It has cost them the loss of parish devotions and parish statues. For others it has cost tears, humiliating reproaches by pastors, frustrating debates with heretical Directors of Religious Education, sneers by either ex-nuns or lapel-pin nuns, rejection by their parishes, and the scandal of endless Eucharistic abuses. The moral license of these pastors has encouraged couples to use contraception, leading to the destruction of their souls and hearts and marriages; to divorce as a solution to marital difficulties; to justify themselves for their remarriages; to approve of homosexual acts and gay “marriage”; and to give political power to pro-abortion politicians. It has emptied religious houses and seminaries.

The liars, then, are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are hypocrites, because they demand obedience when they are disobedient, obliging disobedient acts. They are manipulative, because they direct the obedient dispositions of the flock of Christ to acts of disobedience. They are ruthless because they ruin families and vocations and souls. Instead of governing the faithful for the faithful’s salvation, they use the faithful to get their money in the collection and in the various Diocesan assessments and campaigns. They are happy to lead souls to hell, and make those same souls pay the bill for it. They say they are open minded, but they close themselves to anything resembling reason enlightened by faith. They pretend to be “just peachy guys” when there is no limit to the backbiting, vengeance, slander and animosity they bear towards any of their own parishioners or brother clergy who don’t unconditionally sacrifice their conscience to conform to the liberal agenda.

The liberal pastor then brings into the Church the obedience of hell. The obedience of heaven is the surrender of love. The obedience of hell is the hated power of dominance and control. For more often the deeds of pastors resembles the obedience in hell more than the obedience in heaven.

Making All Things New

What, then, should the laity do when their pastors, particularly their liberal pastors, tell them that they “must” under obedience participate in the next liberal stupidity which faithless fad makes popular in liberal circles? Simply place one requisite: “Prove it.” If Vatican II got rid of purgatory, prove it. The lib will find himself embarrassed, unable to prove it. If Vatican II got rid of marital fidelity, prove it. He won’t be able to. If you say it got rid of statues, beauty in the Churches, and the Tridentine liturgy, prove it! He can’t. He can’t because such assertions are lies.

The massive and public rejection from bishops down to deacons, around the whole world, of the Tridentine Mass is a clear manifestation. We have seen Bishops near and far publicly forbid their clergy from practicing the right of the Tridentine usage, as a response to the Pope’s Motu Proprio which gave them that right. Many clergy assented to their Bishop’s rebellion out of fear; after all, Bishops have tremendous power over clergy. (One of the reasons, in fact, many men turn away from the priesthood is because they know they won’t be obeying a St. Benedict, a St. Anthony of the Desert, a St. Martin of Tours, but a profoundly wicked person who would be very capable of amazing brutality towards his own subject. No, there’s no mystery to why there is a vocations crisis.) Probably the many more were liberal priests who sided with their Bishops against Rome. Yet some priests are on the fence in the midst of all this, and are wooed to the right road by the Pope’s decision to free, to endorse, to encourage the Tridentine usage.

The Writing on the Wall

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin (cf. Dan 5:25): that’s what the Motu Proprio meant to the liberals who do not govern with wisdom but wield power with the might of sin. For the obedience of the liberals is the hate-filled obedience of hell; the obedience of the faithful is the loving obedience of heaven.

And so who can reform the clergy, in a Church which is hierarchical? Only those who govern, and can govern with wisdom and love. Let every Gentle Reader then make endless prayers and sacrifices for the reform of the clergy of the Catholic Church. Tomorrow, Friday, May 30, 2008, is the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests (see Letter (pdf.) from the Congregation of the Clergy). It is also the day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. May the coincidence of these days bring mercy to the Church and to the World, so that the Son of God, still united to his flesh, may make the hearts of the pastors more like his own Sacred Heart. Praying for the clergy is praying really for the whole Church, given the scope and nature of influence they have upon all the faithful.

In this way, we can address the problem of the corruption of the Church, which is largely the corruption of the clergy – and not all clergy, clearly, but a significant portion of those clergy who occupy the most influential offices in the Church today – in a way obedient to St. Paul, who said, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21).