I was walking with Pope Leo and Billy Graham by the Tower of Siloam

And I noticed the tower had fallen and killed many people.  In my distress I turned to them, and Billy Graham told me there is much suffering in our fallen world.  I am no doubt suffering too.  In fact, if I'm honest, my whole life has been missing something, and as I look at that tower I can see the problems of the world that have always been.  But  it's time I admit that the only solution to my distress and depression is to turn to God by repenting and coming to Christ Jesus, to make Him Lord of my life, and then I will find what my life has been missing.  Oh, and then I should make sure I find a local church and become part of it.

I then turned to Pope Leo, who assured me that the world is filled with injustices and suffering.  He likewise assured me that God would be there for me in my own struggles and suffering, to give me the sense of His Presence, and to bring us all to be united as one family in this world.  Once I realize that, I can then get busy and start working on how to make sure no more towers like the one at Siloam fall, or that oppressive regimes can no longer mingle the blood of the innocent with their sacrifices as Pilate did.  

I thought of that when I heard some of the words of Pope Leo in Spain.  I've been listening to Pope Leo quite a bit, eagerly waiting that moment when he finally says 'Yes, Griffeys, the hell you went through to become Catholic was worth it, for there is no more pressing need in all creation than walking with God through Christ in the Catholic Faith.'  Or similar.  

Instead, I heard things that reminded me more of a Catholic version of Rick Warren's A Purpose Driven Life, with a touch of socio-economic and political concerns tagged on the end. Not horrible stuff, but in the end, I just keep getting the impression that it's all about me.  Not me in the sense that it's imperative I repent and draw near to God.  But somehow as if God is a means to an end that ultimately comes back to me.

In fact, it dawned on me that if it was up to the last couple popes we've had, I never would have become Christian, much less Catholic.  Not that they don't act like Jesus or God or the Christian Faith are important, at least from a Catholic POV.  They just aren't - necessary, at least from a modern POV.  Or at best they aren't exclusively necessary.  And there never seems to be any demand on me at all, apart from seeking justice for the oppressed and the immigrant and concerning myself about the world's climate and economic woes.  Big, lofty problems that never really put me on the spot for my own personal life choices and behaviors. 

Out of strange coincidence, as I've listened to Pope Leo, I saw an old clip of Billy Graham a few days back.  It's been a long time since I heard him.  It brough back memories.  Even as an agnostic, I always respected Rev. Graham.  As I told people then that I didn't believe in Christianity, but I knew he did.  And that meant something.  Especially compared to other prominent celebrity ministers in those days.    

Which is why, when he had his famous Crusades on television, I would sometimes watch.  Even in college, if other roommates were out and about, I'd turn him on and listen.  I must admit - and  I know people will probably find all sorts of problems with his theology or ministry style - but when he preached, something often stirred inside me.  He said much of the same thing the last popes have said. Hurting people, hurting world, injustices and all, feeling lost and alone.  But somehow he pointed past the worldly and material to the New Jerusalem (though I wouldn't have identified it as such).     

And he made it clear it wasn't a blank check. I  had to meet God halfway.  A covenant, so to speak. A new covenant, but covenant nonetheless.  God is eternal love and grace and forgiveness, but not on a one-way street. I would have to confess, to step out, to make Jesus Lord of my life for the world to see.  And let me tell you, as an agnostic, the thought of stepping out and saying I believe in Jesus publicly was like begin asked to go to the front of the class and do a calculus problem on the chalkboard.  Because something about the invitation made me think that would be a major decision on my part, nobody to hide behind or nowhere to run.  It was me and my decision or not, and I would have to live with the consequences one way or another.  Let me tell you, that was a powerful idea. 

Despite the dread I had when pondering that, I often entertained the thought.  I think, IIRC, I once actually called that hotline they had at the end of the broadcast. I don't recall if anything happened.  But that's how much it touched me.  I should say, as a Protestant minister, I often got the same zingers in my soul when I listened to Fulton Sheen.  I had never heard of him growing up, but in Louisville there was a station that showed reruns of his old TV show.  Wow, could that fellow preach.  As one from a denomination that put a huge premium on mach schau when it came to sermon delivery, I often stood in awe of Sheen's communication abilities.  A reputation Catholic priests were not always associated with. 

And, like a Catholic Billy Graham, he laid it on the line.  He didn't shy from the issues of the day. Far from it.  But it was always wrapped in higher things.  It was, you might say, a reminder that however many towers we lament or authoritarian atrocities we decry, we need to make sure we - that's me, Dave Griffey - are right with God.  And it isn't going to arrive in the mail with a picture of Ed McMahon on the envelope.  I was going to have to meet and accept God's gift; to be prepared to make the call and follow through.  

I just don't get that from so much of the Church today, including its popes.  As I said here, dignity seems to be the big idol before which our leaders bow (yes, I saw the headline). But is seems to reinforce that modernist idea that it's really all about me isn't it. God's here to give me a purpose driven life, which mainly means, in terms of obligation that I get with the picture and fix the things of the world, as opposed to come forward and confess Christ before men, or repent and sin no more.  

I should add one more thing.  I was chatting with one of my sons, as you're aware I often do.  We were talking about the heavy emphasis on such things as 'fix the problems of the world will you' that is everywhere today.  He said that's one of the things that drags so many younger people down.  The idea that they have no business being anything but miserable unless they invest themselves in fixing vast geopolitical problems that have evaded the leaders of the world since time immemorial. Again, I thought of that when I reflected on Pope Leo's call to trust that God loves us, but make sure we use this realization to get out there and be those social justice warriors that the world wants.  As opposed to focusing on anything terribly eternal in our own personal considerations.  

And now a few passages to ponder: 

For this reason, he added that those who allow themselves to be enlightened by the Gospel “also develop a critical perspective regarding a social system that does not place the person at the center and gives rise to situations of injustice and existential poverty on various levels.”   Pope Leo XIV  

"True repentance is a turning from sin... Humanly speaking, it is our small part in the plan of salvation. Our part is repenting. God will do the converting, the transforming, and the forgiving." Billy Graham

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?3I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.4Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”  Emphasis mine. 

To my thinking, one of these passages is not like the other two, even if there are similarities. 

BONUS REMINDER:  For those who grew up in the Faith, this is what people outside are often looking for when they've been primed to seek God.  It would be nice if modern Church leaders remember that:

Just don't

 This:

As seen on the Stumbling Toward Heaven blog

The thing hurting the proclamation of the Gospel most, at least in the dying West, is that up and coming youngsters just don't believe it.  Oh, they've heard the story most of their lives.  At least in the vaguest sense, filtered through the opinions and research of critics, skeptics and people hostile to the Faith.  Shocking no one, they just don't believe it.  Our atheist culture has told them the Christian Faith is worth no more than a Grimm's Fairy Tale at best, and the Marxist inspired Liberation Theology tradition can't get enough of pointing out how wretched and evil and racist and phobic sexist those old pages of "Holy" Scripture are.  The constant drumbeat among believers and leaders today of repenting for the first 2000 years of the Faith, and willingness to change on a dime when the World snaps its fingers, only plays into this. 

Plus, as has been said for years, many youngsters just don't believe anyone believes it anymore.  I've quoted many times that youth from ages ago who I first saw mentioned at Catholic and Enjoying It.  Why are youth formally rejecting belief in God and the Gospel and Jesus Christ?  Because they don't see anyone acting like they believe it's true.  Oh, on Sundays you get angels and demons and miracles and God and all.  But come Monday, and light can barely shine through the gap between the Christian and the Atheist in how life in this world is approached.  As someone quipped in a discussion some time back, the big difference between atheists and Christians today is that atheists can sleep in on Sunday. 

So there are few things worse in this hot mess context than admitting our faith and prayers and even God are utterly worthless unless they align with the actual solutions to our problems in the form of our political activism for the real world.  That tells these young people all they need to know to conclude that yes, Virginia, religion is dead.  Or at least pointless.  Politics and the state are all that matter.  The here and now counts, since there is nothing else.  And obviously material solutions are the only ones of consequence.  Why, you have plenty of good churchgoers who admit it.  See Mark's bold claims above.  When the guy who drags himself out of bed to show up to church on Sunday is willing to admit just how useless all this God and prayer garbage is next to our real world solutions, do you really think what goes on in that church is worth anything to our increasingly secularized youth?  I don't think so. 

And it's not just Mark and the godless secularists who claim that the efficacy of our prayers to God is contingent upon their adherence to proper political activism.  A staggering number of Christians and leaders, not just Catholic, have jumped on this 'God as a bad joke' bandwagon, even if they don't realize it.  And not just with gun control.  Sadly, nothing appears to help secular evangelism today more than modern Christianity.  More's the pity. 

Oh, and we won't delve into Mark attributing those turning to prayer's fruitfulness and God's sovereignty to the designs of the devil since it doesn't align with his political opinions.  That makes me think of no other passage in Scripture than this:

But when the Pharisees heard it they said, “It is only by Beel′zebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand; and if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beel′zebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

I realize there is a lot of theology in that passage, but sometimes a superficial reading is enough to jar our senses.  Don't attribute appeals to God's providence to Satan. Unless Pope Francis and others are correct when they allude to the possibility that, like almost anything else in the history of the Faith, the whole 'eternal separation from God' is a bunch of bunk, you might want to slow down associating the working of God and his children with the Devil for any reason, much less political ones.  Prayers for his soul being in order in this case.

The State and God are not the same

 Because obviously God would have some improving to do to equal the State:

The ease with which Christians have shoved God into the Sunday closet and deferred to the efficacy of the State as our only salvation shows the speed with which God can so easily be mocked. 

For the godless Left, of course, the State is substitute God.  And activists are its prophets.  For the believer and the sane and rational individual who made it through kindergarten, we know better. 

Now I have no idea what issue is being referenced here. Mocking thoughts and prayers began with selectively chosen shootings and the idea that guns and guns alone are the only thing worth focusing on.  Since then it has spread to a host of issues where the only acceptable response is to take your loser thoughts and your loser prayers to your loser God and keep them for an hour on Sunday mornings where they belong.  

Again, it is the progressive activist and the dogma of progress that will save the day.  God, prayers, and anything spiritual has bupkis to do with the real problems of the real world.  Let's bet on how many good and faithful Christians approve this message. 

I should say that it goes without saying I believe Christians should be involved in things, including politics.  But since mocking thoughts and prayers unless tied to distinctly leftwing activism has become all the rage among the Left, I'm wagering the shirt is supposed to imply more than a simple statement of intent. 

The Catholic Church and the latest

I'm sure we all have heard the news.  Pope Francis said that clergy can now bless same sex unions under certain circumstances and for certain reasons. 

It's funny.  Protestantism's biggest failing was not preventing the endless splits and divisions that arose after the Reformation.  Protestants would look at an issue, say they disagree with an issue, and it was off to start a new denomination.  

But Catholics are now doing the same thing.  Perhaps they have been for a long time. I don't know.  But there are clearly different Catholic Churches out there.  Just look at how people are reacting to this.  The news media aside, some are saying this latest development is wonderful. It's a major change in the right direction.  Others are saying it is no change at all. Still others are saying it is a change, but in the wrong direction. Some are saying the blessings have always been there, and in no way suggest the union is being blessed.  Others say this has always happened and is nothing new, that the Church has always been able to bless people in same sex unions.  While others are saying it is merely pastoral, which I suppose is meant to cover a multitude of sins. 

The only difference is, they aren't rushing out and starting their own denominations.  But the difference in how the Church is understood today between rival factions within it is no different than the difference between Baptists, Presbyterians and Lutherans within Protestantism.  Sure, there were some core agreements.  But the understanding of how the Faith actually should look and work were radically different.  Just like we see today in the Church. 

In September of 1999, while I was in the PhD program, I decided to take a big chance.  This was during the Mohler Revolution, and one of the developments of that movement was putting the kibosh on all that lovey ecumenical friendliness with Catholics that had happened in previous years.  That's what I reference when I point out Russ Moore's statements of endless adoration for Catholicism.  If he did have such high opinions of the Catholic Church back then, he kept them to himself as far as I know. For obvious reasons.   

It was a rainy September afternoon, and it was during a break between two seminars.  I went to a Catholic church that was just down from where we lived in student housing for families.  By then my two oldest were around (we would soon find out about our third son).  I went into the office and asked to talk to someone about the Catholic Faith. 

No clue just who the individual was.  She had her own office, I suppose something to do with education.  As is not uncommon, the church had a school attached.  I asked her to give me the skinny on just what Catholicism really believes.  What she said set me back for about a half dozen years.  

She said, in the end, Catholics believe all sorts of things.  It isn't something where you have to believe one thing.  The Church looks mighty different, depending on who you talk to. What one believes about Catholicism can be very different than what another believes, but that's just fine.  I was taken by that.  Why become Catholic?  I could stay Protestant and just denominationally window shop if that's the case.

Years later, after I came into the Church, I was working with the Coming Home Network.  We were at EWTN studios for reasons I can't recall.  It was there I met Kevin O'Brien, Mark Shea and several others.  They invited me to an after broadcast soiree.  While sharing wine and chocolates, Mark Shea sort of put me in front of the crowd and asked me to tell my tale.  When I got to the point above, I remember Mark's quip.  He said nobody works harder to keep people from becoming Catholic than Catholics.  And he was right in that regard.

He also would be correct now, if  he was commenting on the latest from Pope Francis.  It isn't that we are seeing people say Pope Francis just declared something and they think he is wrong.  They don't agree on what he declared. And increasingly they don't agree on what the Church has been doing about this topic since forever.  Even though it's right there for us to look at.  And Pope Francis is right here to clarify.  Yet we are seeing more divisions over this than any brawl between Methodists and Baptists from days gone by. That's supposed to be Catholicism's biggest selling point.  Unlike Protestants who endlessly quibble and divide over this and that core teaching, Catholics have a definite Magisterium with definite teachings that you can reject or accept, but which can't be denied.  Well, that isn't the case now, is it.  

I noticed something this year as we head into the Holidays.  At our local grocery store, the Salvation Army kettle has already been taken down.  I notice some stores, even days ago, are already tearing down the Christmas displays.  Halloween had a longer shelf life.  But is it any surprise that I noticed that the Salvation Army bell-ringers have already taken down their stations?  That some stores began days ago to take down their the Christmas sections?  

Either Christmas, and more to the point Christianity as a whole, is true or not, and our yes should be yes and no should be no in that regard.  When we don't just disagree on a statement, but disagree on what a statement says and what the Church is and has always been about, don't expect the result to be a society that is beating a path to the doors of the Church.  Just ask any Episcopalian or United Church of Christ pastor. 

Rather, expect what we are seeing, and that's a society that is tired of the whole Christmas season.  Not because of the noise or the toys, but because they no longer believe it is true.  That's because we in the Church can't agree about what is true that is right in front of us, and increasingly, what has been true for the past two thousand years. In an age of aggressive secularization and converting the faithful against the Faith, that's as good as hanging a 'Closed for Business' sign on the doors. 

The most shocking thing I have read in many months

 A new Gallup Poll (take it for what it's worth) has found that: 

"Seventy-four percent of Americans said they believe in God, while 69 percent said they believe in angels and 67 percent said they believe in heaven, the poll found. Slightly smaller shares — 59 percent and 58 percent — said they believe in hell and the devil."

That stunned me.  Today, 2023, and 58% of Americans believe in the Devil?  They don't say what they believe about the Devil, but at least they believe something about the Devil. 

By now we should look back and realize that we've been a secularized country for generations.  And that secular movement has relentlessly, and at times ruthlessly, proselytized religious believers for decades.  Armed with convenient interpretations of the Bill of Rights and a sympathetic education industry, pop culture and media, their browbeating of historical religious faith has been unrelenting.  And that includes openly mocking people of traditional beliefs with impunity, often through those same media and cultural outlets.  More than one professor I had in college in the 1980s was happy to openly ridicule religion, especially traditional religious beliefs, especially Christianity.

But through it all, 58% still believe in the Devil?  I'm reminded of this:

Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.  1 Kings 19.18

Of course believing in the Devil and acting like you believe in the Devil are two different things.  Other polls have found a lack of traditional Christian beliefs among the faithful, including the majority of Catholics not believing in the Real Presence.  This doesn't count the growing number of Christians (Devil believers apparently) who openly embrace what the Faith has historically believed is 'of the Devil.'  

So it's not all peaches and cream.  The point of the article is that these beliefs, such as belief in the Devil and Hell, are declining.  I'm just shocked they haven't declined far more than they have.  So there is hope.  

Out secular society has been hitting us with everything it can for decades, all while telling us to step aside and let it do so.  On the whole, much of our leadership has been willing to let the World have its way in this regard.  Yet 58% still believe in the Devil.  Someone within the halls of the Faith is doing something right.  Insert 'chef's kiss' here:

My unanswered response

Fall as it ever is in my mind

As many regular guests to my blog know, we are a family of seasonal traditions.  And no season gobbles up more time and effort tradition-wise than that greatest of all seasons: Fall.  This year, with a host of changes and obligations and time constraints, we'll again have to broaden what, when and where we do things.

In the olden days, the rules were binding: We didn't begin 'Fall things' until after the Autumnal Equinox.  That is, no cider, caramel apples, bonfires, hayrides or fall decorations.  Then came October, when we quickly turned to the spooky side of life, with ghost runs in cemeteries, Halloween specials, horror movies (kid appropriate) and all the fun that went with that time of year.  In those days Fall and Halloween largely overlapped. 

Eventually we had to spread things out.  As the boys got older and filled up more space on their calendars, time became limited.  So we expanded to all things Fall by early September, right after Labor Day.  For a while we began with some 'generic' horror mystery type reading or viewing even in August - The Invisible Man, The Hound of the Baskervilles.  But our second oldest requested we hold off until after his August birthday.  So it was back to post-Labor Day for fall.

We still kept Halloween proper until October.  Nonetheless, as the years went on, we found a loophole and decided to designate the time after Michaelmas as the time we turn towards that season of spooks.  We still try to decorate only shortly before Halloween since I believe too early and the decorations lose their umph. 

This year we have to expand again.  Our second oldest granted us a dispensation by saying we can have our annual Harvest Fest before his birthday this year.  Heck, we can even watch a few things like Fantasia, that we've sometimes used as sort of kick-off viewing.  

Our youngest is old enough that we'll likely set aside some of the things we've continued to do for his sake.  Plus with my son's bookstore opening up over Labor Day, he will be an occasional guest visitor to the house.  This doesn't count the increasing time burden on the other two older sons in their vocational pursuits, plus more responsibilities for my wife with her position, and my mom who continues to move along nicely, if also more needy. 

That's why now, in these unusually cool August days, I find my mind beginning to wax autumnal.  Which brought to mind a 'spooky' fall post I did a year ago that cost me a reader.  Now there was some debate among my longer term readers if he was, in fact, a troll or not.  Since he usually kept things on topic - a tactic almost anathema to internet trolls - I generally assumed good intentions. 

Nonetheless when I posted my reflections on our secular age of tech and industry with spirit stuff relegated to Sunday mornings before the coffee hour, he swooped in with a very curt comment then kicked the dust off his heals and moved on, never to comment again. Here is the post with his comment and my response.  

I still stick to my guns, as my response that he never responded to makes clear. The older I get the more I become convinced that we Christians went the wrong direction in light of the amazing era of discovery and invention in which we grew.  We allowed the non-believer to have his way, and replaced the Christian worldview with a rather atheistic one, with religion stepping in  only if all else fails.  That was the purpose of my post, which set off who had become a somewhat regular commenter. .

A PSA from the American Library Association

*Please read update below

On how to sex up the youngest of these in your rural, small town libraries.  Yep.  Read it here.  Not much to add.  Sexing up our youngest children is already underway and increasingly endorsed by our pagan society. Enough Americans still get the willies, however, that it calls for some help in the endeavor.  But those priests of our pagan nation also know that a vast majority of Americans - Christians included - will turn a blind eye or deny.  That's all they need.  

Exactly where we go from here I don't know.  As I said, paganism, even of a secular variety, is the at-rest position of humanity shorn of the revelation of God. Most modern hipsters imagine paganism means getting to  attend awesome orgies at Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice.  Perhaps.  But it also means much, must more, often with a steep price.  And it's a price the grandchildren of our grandchildren are going to have to pay in this world, and possibly even in the next. 

UPDATE:  Apparently the link above goes nowhere since the article in question has been removed.  That's called getting caught.  I have no doubt that the ALA still intends what it wrote there.  It will simply find a different, slicker way to get the message out.  The modern Left is becoming so bad that such subterfuge and mendacity, denial and hypocrisy have become the stock and store of everything they do.  If you want to read what it said, Rod Dreher wisely copied some of the text down on his blog for all of its cringe inducing glory. 

If Dr. Phil was pope

I can't think of many differences between a letter he would write to an LGBTQ outreach event, and this one from Pope Francis: 

Dear brother,

Thank you for the letter you sent me a few weeks ago, along with the “Outreach 2022” brochure. Congratulations for having been able to make the event happen this year in person.

I am aware that the most valuable thing is not what appears in the brochure or in the photos, but what happened in interpersonal encounters. In fact, the pandemic made us seek alternatives to shorten the distances. It also taught us that certain things are irreplaceable, among them the possibility to look at each other “face to face,” even with those who think differently or those whose differences seem to separate or even confront us. When we overcome these barriers, we realize that there is more that unites us than separates us.

I encourage you all to keep working in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences, in the same manner of Jesus, who made himself close to everyone.

I assure you of my prayers. Don’t stop praying for me. May Jesus bless you and the Blessed Virgin care for you.

Fraternally,

Francis

No mention of anything of religious substance.  Just 'hang in there' levels of pep-poster talk.  Nothing about wanting to help people come closer to God, Christ, a moral life, or anything.  The idea of leaving a sinful lifestyle isn't even worth mentioning.  Where Jesus and Mary and God exist at all, is where they exist in our modern paganism - at best to bless me no matter what I do or want, otherwise stay out of my way. Which is just what one would hear listening to the latest installment of Oprah Winfrey.  

In fact, apart from how he spends his Sundays, I can't really think of anything that makes Pope Francis sound any different than any one of a thousand talking heads, pop psychiatrists, television commentators, and self-help gurus in our modern world.  If there is a bigger problem with a pope, I'm at pains to imagine what it is. 

Talking about liberal Christianity

Is like talking about the ninth inning of a football game.  

Here is the latest from that post-Christian branch of Protestantism known as United Methodism.  One of its openly gay preachers, who also preaches under the drag queen alias of Ms. Penny Cost, has come out and denounced the Bible.  Yep.  It reminds me of when the Episcopal Church voted to declare the New Testament an anti-Semitic, racist propaganda rag. 

I was going to write a long blabbering post about how so many liberal Protestant denominations have gotten to this point.  How I could sit next to colleagues in my ministry days and hear a United Church of Christ pastor say she just can't understand the arrogance behind believing in a personal God.  But why bother?

Suffice to say, when you look back at the history of these denominations and how they began to turn in the 19th and 20th centuries, it's not hard to see parallels to the Catholic Church over the last few generations.   Remember, they didn't start this way.  This dumpster fire result started by letting the World dictate priorities and deciding it was time to change their teachings to accommodate.  Only after generations of doing that did we end up with Ms. Penny Cost.  And it won't stop there. A word of warning to the Catholic Church today. 

Trivializing the Eucharist for all the world to see

 Is what I'm seeing a particular group of Catholics do in light of the news about Nancy Pelosi:

Beyond the very Protestant approach of 'if you don't like this Bishop's version of Catholicism, just drive down the street and find a Bishop's version of Catholicism you do like' approach, it essentially mocks the Eucharist.  

After all, nothing says 'Psssst, we don't really think it's anything other than a wafer and some wine' more than acting like it's nothing other than a wafer and some wine.  Because nothing says to the world that we believe there is nothing real or substantive that goes on at Communion than acting as if it is a commodity to be bargained over by the highest bidders.  

Nope, in the last two years as the world has revealed itself, we've watched in stunned amazement as line in the sand after line in the sand is stepped over by those who would conform to the world.  And now we have Catholics acting as if the Eucharist is everything the world has said it is, and less.  

In fairness, Sam is hardly the only Catholic to react this way.  His was just one of the more flippant. 

Not sure what to take from this

Except to don my merry secularist and call it a cosmic coincidence.  So I still check Facebook once in a while to see what's going on with old acquaintances.  One of my classmates from days of yore had this on her page:

I almost never waste my time with these things, but since I was just getting going on the day and was getting our youngest up for school, I thought I'd do it on a lark.

As it happened, he's getting ready to read The Merchant of Venice as his next lit assignment, so that was right here on my desk.  I know, that was cruel of me to assign that.  Him being in seventh grade and all.  I could have chosen Macbeth or Hamlet, but he knows those to well.  I wanted to challenge him with a Shakespeare yarn he's unfamiliar with. 

It's one of the Signet Classics versions, BTW, with academic notes and writes ups, plus vocabulary and footnotes to help the modern reader though some of the terms and phrases that seem strange to us today.  I recommend those versions whenever possible. 

Anyway, I picked up the book, and turned to page 18.  Now, as a qualifier, let me say I skipped the intro as it was numbered with Roman numerals, as such intros often are.  I went to the pages numbered in Arabic numerals, since that was used in the above image, which began with the play proper.  From there, I went to the eighteenth page.  Then I read down to line four, and this is what it said:

"The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

Wow.  Given my musings on salvation and getting hung up on numbers that I posted today, I thought that was a bit ... odd.  Certainly odd timing.  It also made me wonder.  Funny, we dismiss such things today in a very secular way.  Dumb luck.  Cosmic coincidence.  Just weird that I posted that and suddenly this turned up in a goofy Internet exercise.  And yet there was a time in ages past when such a thing would make even the most hardened theologian rub his chin and ponder. 

Not that everything has to be demons and angels doing it.  In even the most superstitious age, people were able to discern between the natural and the supernatural.  It's just sometimes I think we've moved the bar too far in the direction opposite of superstition. 

With that said, I'm not going to delete the post.  Nor am I going to assume it must  be confirmation that all those other people are misusing Scripture.  I'll likely have a good chuckle as I have now, and then move on.   But it is worth noting that I'm doing this because I've been very well trained by our secular age.  I've been taught to hold the bar very high indeed for any idea that something could be nothing other than natural cause or mere coincidence.  

Turning to a different gospel

From Mark Shea in reference to an observation by Rebecca Weiss: 

My reply:

Jesus did not tell the rich young man to deal with the evil in his own heart before dealing with the evils in society. He told him to go and sell all he had, give it to the poor, and then follow him. (Unsurprisingly, this is a saying that conservative American MAGA antichrist religion takes enormous pains to minimize, downplay, deny, avoid, and piously reject with precisely the “work on yourself first” stuff that, in fact, does not exist in the gospel.)

Speaking of other gospels with no bearing on the Gospel we are to follow. 

No, Jesus does not specifically say go and work out all your problems before doing His will, since He doesn't seem to put working out our own problems and doing His will as two conflicting commands.  Likewise, Christ did not say 'I have not come to call sinners to repentance, but rather to inspire them to fix the socio-economic problems of the Roman Empire as first priority."

If I had ever heard anyone make the argument they rebut then perhaps I could see it.  But I've heard this preached on many times in all three major Christian traditions - Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox - and in my limited experience, I have never heard a single individual suggest the narrative's lesson is that we should avoid helping others until we become pure and perfect.  Despite Mark's insistence to the contrary, I've just not heard it, and until this, it had never entered my mind as a possible interpretation of this text. Heck, I've never heard a person make the argument that we should focus on making ourselves pure before helping others no matter what biblical passage was in question. 

I would suggest to Ms. Weiss and Mr. Shea that if they think the Gospel call is for us to not concern ourselves with the evils in our own hearts as we continue to sin and sin boldly, so much as fixing the socio-economic and political problems of the world (no doubt from a political unbiased perspective), it might be time to go back to RCIA. For the rest of us, when you see people twisting the teachings of the Faith the way Perchik did to fit his Marxist ideology in Fiddler on the Roof, it's a good bet you should avoid listening to them where issues like salvation and our eternal destinies are concerned.  Just saying. 

Oh, and just for the record, I'm being charitable here. I'm hoping they're not rebutting the Christian teaching that our ultimate problems in the world are our separation from God and the sin of our hearts.  I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they aren't embracing the very secular and anti-religious idea that society's problems are all about failure to adhere to infallible policies and political solutions as put forth by particular political activism and ideology.  I'm leaving my take as it being merely their disastrously bad exegesis of Scripture. 

The War on Christmas is cool again!

 Says so right here:

That's, of course, nothing that Christians haven't been fighting against for decades.  Then suddenly, around the later GW Bush years, it became cool to mock such concerns.

Worried about being told you can't say Christmas? Worried about the hyper-commercialism aggressively pushing Christ out of the picture?  Worried that some are letting the very paganized secular message of greed and consumerism blur the Gospel message?   Bah.  Loser. 

I recall when Russ Moore, who once called all Conservative to unite that we may prevail in the culture wars, published an article washing his hands of the whole silly obsession.  War on Christmas?  Humbug.  You're not going to get a cushy seat in the West Wing with that attitude. So concern about how the secular world mishandles and manhandles this time of year became a favorite target by not just those left of center, but by those 'former conservative, but much better now' believers. 

Well, I'm glad to see we can care again.  I get the purpose of the Twitter post.  All this talk of not-Biden's fault supply chain disruptions mixed with not-to-worry-about-it inflation has led some reporters to speak of a ruined holiday season. 

FWIW, I've heard no Christians actually saying Christmas can be ruined in such a way.  Most I know subscribe to the Grinch/Charlie Brown attitude that Christmas doesn't come from a store.  That maybe, just maybe, it means a little bit more.

So Deacon Greydanus must mean those secularists, those on the Left, the media and others who are making it all about not-Biden's fault supply chain issues.  Nice to have him back.  Perhaps 'War on Christmas' is a bit over the top.  I prefer 'War against God.'  But at least he's back, and there's one more voice to remind us when the World says get Christ out of the way because it's all about give me, give me, give me, get, get, get, Christians need to stand up and make clear it's no such thing. 

St. Michael as retired general

I wrote last year on the observation that the Catholic Church seems to have put St. Michael in the cupboard along with the old cookie cutters and other archangels, while Satanism is becoming all the rage in our country.  Thank goodness a growing number of Christians and their leaders are pretty sure angels and devils were just literary devices and myths fabricated by ancient humans who didn't have science!

The great warring angel has been sent to pasture by modernity, a war veteran retired from service, sent to the old angel's home. I'm sure the Satanic legions are fine with that development. 

It took the most educated and scientifically sophisticated generation in history to miss what any other age of humanity could have seen a hundred miles away. Perhaps it's because we think we're better than them for not seeing it that we don't see the obvious.  Everything in our world today suggests it's we who are the blind generation, and those ancients huddled around the fire pit and longhouse hearth were the ones with eyes. 

For a bonus, here is the always informative Fish Eaters with a nice little write up on Michaelmas from that more Christian influenced world of old.  Complete, of course, with some cultural trappings and even a few recipes!  

Life in the world of Sciencedom

Merlin gets it

The one God comes to drive out the many gods.  The spirits of wood and stream grow silent.  It's the way of things.   Excalibur, 1981. 

So said Merlin in the movie Excalibur.  One of many old tropes in which the Enlightened march of Christianity and the Western way came to drive out the barbarism and paganism of the old world.  

Well, let's try that now given developments over the past few years:

Science comes to drive out the old Christian god.  The spirits and demons grow silent.  It's the way of things. 

I'd say that's accurate.  Whether it should be accurate or not isn't my concern.  But I'd say it is accurate for our time.  Science is, in many ways, the default god of our time; science is the religion, science is the church, and scientists are the priesthood.  

Whether or not they should be, or science is really this and not is irrelevant.  I'd wager in the minds of many - perhaps most - Westerners, this is the fact.  Science long ago dispelled religion as an archaic superstitious attempt to answer questions of the world.  Science is now the answer to everything. 

Certainly people outside the Faith hold this view and are open about it.  Science and scholarship utilizing the methods of science have long debunked ancient religious myths and folktales.  Moses, David, and Jesus are now no more real than leprechauns, minotaurs and banshees.  The spirit world has faded into nothing but viruses and molecules, and everything that was explained by the spirit world is now explained by science. 

That's the non-believer.  Within the halls of the faithful, many have more or less accepted this at face value as well, with the caveat that there's still God of sorts, and eternity is as good as always.  But in most cases, the Bible is no more than a collection of myths and fairy tales no different than the Aeneid or the Iliad.  More than one of my old liberal Protestant colleagues held to such a viewpoint. 

Others, of course, don't go so far.  But they'll certainly concede that science has opened up an entirely new way of seeing things.  Gone is Jesus casting out demons.  Epilepsy you see.  Gone are Adam and Eve.  Those are just ancient representations of some vague moment when our ape ancestors evolved into the current version of humanity.  Gone are many old tales that clearly came from a primitive past outside of the realm of scientific inquiry and our modern knowledge of how things really work.  

And those are the faithful Sunday to Sunday believers who still hold to the physical Resurrection or the Virgin Birth.  It's just other parts of the Christian vision of the world they're willing to rewrite or dismiss as ancient tales from an ancient world perspective because, well, Science. 

So given that, it hasn't been difficult for this new age of Science to become the new religion.  An age of Sciencedom you might say.  And like being a pagan in old Christendom, being a Christian in Sciencedom is becoming increasingly difficult.  Sure, it took some time for the Christian faith to eliminate most vestiges of old pagan beliefs.  It's taken less time for Sciencedom to do the same thing to a growing list of Christian beliefs.

What about those who have been the faithful, who have clung to the reality of people walking on water and rising from the dead and crossing Red Seas?  Given the speed with which so many of them are now throwing out old priorities, old moralities, old teachings on everything from the nature of humans to the exclusivity of the Gospel message to traditional Christian morals, it makes you wonder just how much they really had resisted the new gospel of Science after all.  

Again, I'm not saying this is what science is, or that science should be used this way, or that it's an affront to science or not.  Nor am I saying it was the fault of science and it was science that made a bunch of devout believers question everything.  

I know full well that many in high places of Western intelligentsia were already questioning even the existence of the One God long before Industrialization came into play.  It could be that the faith has been wavering for a while, and now that the institutions of Sciencedom are beginning to push harder, we're seeing just how many had remained faithful to the old time religion, and just how many had already begun to lose faith. 

The ghosts of Covid

By, of all things, CNN.  I read through this, chuckled, sighed and rolled my eyes.  It's a propaganda piece for Covid of course, telling about cases where those who died due to Covid have been reaching out from beyond the grave to their loved ones.  Not that I have a problem with the premise itself, but that it's soooooooo wrapped around Covid Press is the difficult part to stomach. 

Naturally CNN, being CNN, has to believe that unless a lab-coat-science-guy can label it, it's not credible. Sadly, that seems to be many church leaders', and church traditions', approach.  Assume more or less an atheistic model of the universe, primarily material, explainable by science and only science ,,, but if that doesn't work then spirit and miracles stuff is a nice fallback. 

With rising suicides, drug abuse, depression, diseases, cancer rates among younger and younger age groups, dementia and Alzheimer's being found among younger and younger age groups, food allergies skyrocketing, and a plethora of other ailments and syndromes being diagnosed, you'd think we'd question this dogged veneration of STEM and the latest Research (TM).  

More than that, as we look at the last half century of applying 'science and research' to all of our problems, and see rising rates in these and other problems - not to mention how often the latest 'revelation by the 'experts' turns out to be dismissed by generations of later experts - we might want to consider the possibility that STEM isn't the end all answer to everything.  

Maybe mental health is a lucrative industry, but a poor substitute for religious devotion and spiritual enlightenment.  And perhaps there are parts of Creation, both visible and invisible, beyond the reach of STEM, lab coats, modern scholarship and the "experts", opening up the door for religion to step in and reassert itself.  You'd think, wouldn't you. 

Biden is the Catholic President the modern Catholic Church deserves

Yep.  As the most prominent Catholic in the world aside from the Pope, his first days have been spent undoing most anything Trump did, including broadening the ability to abort pregnancies by the tens of millions in order to sustain our sex culture with a giant 'Catholics can do this and it's awesome' stamp.  

No, Catholics upset about this haven't been paying attention to our own Church.  This isn't Medieval or Renaissance problems with power hungry bishops and popes with concubines.  It's not where the basics are assumed by the masses, even if we have to watch out for the corrupt summoners.  

This is a point where a sizeable number of Church leaders, and a majority of Catholics in many parts of the world, simply no longer believe what the Church has taught for 2000 years. They don't believe in Christianity anymore.  Poll after poll finds that they don't believe the Eucharist is more than bread and wine.  They don't think the Trinity is anything but a Christian opinion about God (hence the easy ability to say things like 'Muslims worship the same God, no questions').  They don't believe in actual miracles, the Virgin Birth, or even the Resurrection. This doesn't count their complete support for the moral and social sins promoted by the secular world. 

In these things, when they speak of them at all, they sound more like agonistic and atheist skeptics than traditional Christians. Many just come out and say they don't believe it at all.  A friend of mine gave me a book on the Bible.  He wanted me to use it to do a lecture series at his parish.  Priest though he was, and rather conservative at that, I was stunned when I read through the text.  It was as 'critical scholarship' as any atheist ever proposed, rejecting almost everything except the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth.  The whole Old Testament was reduced to Peter Pan and Harry Potter.  He even accepted the rather recent development in skeptical scholarship that most of the New Testament was written centuries after the fact, the Church merely lied about their dates to buttress the idea of apostolic authorship.  And from what I could tell, the author himself wasn't some flaming leftist liberal type!

That's the Church today.  Everything it does - like most Mainline Protestants and a growing number of mainstream evangelicals - screams WE DON'T REALLY BELIEVE IT EITHER!  And the world is watching and the young are hearing loud and clear.  Oh they may appreciate the constant acquiescing to the modern nihilism and narcissism satiated only by meaningless sex and jaded hedonism.  But they also see that Christians running about with all those prayers on their lips don't believe it any more than they believe there was some big war in a galaxy far, far away.  

After all, if the distinction of the modern Church is how freely it will change its teachings to keep up with the latest Jonses, people begin to assume any other teachings not yet changed are nonetheless up for grabs.  And that might even include rethinking the very existence of a God.  Hence the gushing numbers of people abandoning the faith and and leaving it once and for all. 

True believers trump non-believers every time

The Jesus Indians of Ohio by Craig Atwood

Don't let atheists fool you.  They like to proclaim variations on 'Oh, I don't believe, I just don't have a belief', when it comes to religion.  Had they been born and raised on a deserted island with no contact with humanity, and then had no religious belief, it could be argued that theirs was simply the result of having no belief about religion. But in our world, there is this thing called religion, the belief in supernatural and divine forces, and most atheists are aware of this and simply choose to believe those religious explanations for what atheists don't know are false. 

Despite their little verbal sleight of hand, however, many modern atheists are rather zealous and fanatical about their belief that no non-material explanation exists for what atheism can't tell us.  So much so, that in most cases today, atheism is calling the shots about how we understand reality, God, religion, morality, humanity, history, and almost any other subject under the sun.

So yesterday was the memorial of Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf, priests and martyrs and companions in this, the New World.  That's back when we remembered both sides in historical conflicts typically give as good as they get.  Here is that ursine blogger St. Corbinian's Bear, reminding us that if you have time to read this, you have time to pray the hours (and if you have to give up reading me to do so, I'd say you should choose the more important thing - and it ain't reading me).

But I thought of their martyrdom.  I thought of the fact that Christians in America, including the Catholic Church, have adopted the very atheistic understanding of events from that period.  For the push to eradicate  the heritage of the Christian West and the United States is predicated on two fundamental beliefs: 1) that through the prism of multiculturalism, there is no culture or civilization that is in any way inferior to the West, and the West brought nothing particularly special to the world table (if, in fact, it wasn't the true and sole cause of all evil and suffering in the world), and 2) Religions are false.  They aren't real.  They are lies.  There is no God or eternity to speak of.  Perhaps there is some parallel universe or some extra-material energy field when we die, but none of the world religions are right, nor did they happen.  They are false.

Therefore, the two reasons why we could mourn the atrocities of the past while still celebrating the best of those who brought the civilization of Western Christendom to the new world have now been dashed on the rocks of a post-Christian, atheist worldview.  The Western colonizers, immigrants and pioneers brought nothing, zero, nada to the new world.  Anything we could call good - notions of democracy or freedom or equality or liberty, however poorly lived out - were probably here all along anyway.  Some argue that we even stole our ideas of democracy and equality from the Indians Native Americans.

Certainly appeals to the indigenous practices of human sacrifice, child sacrifice, matricide, patricide and infanticide, in addition to slavery, war and even genocide, don't cut it.  Only white Europeans can be racists and therefore guilty of genocide.  Slavery is only bad when done by Europeans.  And in a country where our womenfolk have aborted over 50 million unborn children in barely four decades, I don't think we'll sweat the pre-Columbian practice of human sacrifice and infanticide.  

But then, most Indian activists have no problem unqualifiedly praising their ancestors and cultures.  No apologies for anything their ancestors did, or any practices we might condemn today.  Heck, they can actually come out and say they oppose open borders and end up being quoted with respect, not as obvious racist supremacists that are usually the type who oppose open borders.  But then, I can watch a PBS series about the history of Africa, and see Muslim scholars praise the history of Islamic conquests of other people because of the boon their superior Islamic culture brought to the conquered.  See?  That's a true believer. 

Likewise, to the second point, since religions are obviously false anyway, there was absolutely no reason to think there was a net positive for the indigenousness peoples where their contact with Christianity was concerned.  Since Christianity is no different, and no more true, than indigenous religious beliefs, there was nothing gained by us coming here, and nothing that could possibly outshine the atrocities and evils that did occur.  After all, nothing they did in their own cultures was bad anyway (multiculturalism), so tearing down those cultures for a lie and a falsehood was altogether a net-negative.  

And the Catholic Church, with recent apologies, grovelings and even removing the celebration of martyrs and saints who ministered to the native populations, appears to agree.  Once again it accepts the premise of the non-believer, the ungodly, and the secularists, and then turns around on a Sunday and says 'but show up to Mass and give to the Bishop's annual appeal!'.  You can see the disconnect here, can't you?  

That's because the true believer always beats out non- or un-believers.  Those with no belief, or no real investment in their beliefs, will lose to the zealot, the fanatic, the true believer every time.  As we watch the secular, the Marxist, the leftist, the atheist, the non-Christian, the anti-Westerner, the anti-American, and every other force score one victory after another, and see those who proclaim faith in the God of history revealed through the Gospel of Christ surrender one hill after another, it makes you wonder which ones really believe, and which ones became unbelievers long ago.