God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515

MEDICAL doctors who are honest and upfront about possibly terminal illness are generally not hated for the news they deliver.  Those who speak about spiritual ailments, however, are greatly disliked.

Please pause a moment and have sympathy for the messenger before reading this post. This is not fun, but since you have kindly granted this sympathy to me, I hereby grant you permission to hate my guts. Please know, however, that everything I say is not said on my own authority. It is said on the authority of those greatly superior to myself, whose words and teachings I have studied and to which I am bound.

If you are guilty of any errors mentioned below, I do not revel in your error or condemn you as a person. It is the awareness of my own mistakes and sins that motivates me. I want to spare you my wrongs.

Now for my subject:

In all the posts I did about “the pandemic,” I never lamented the fact that people were forced to stay home from church. Yes, the unconstitutional orders that closed those churches were wrong and treasonous. Yes, all congregations and ministers should have resisted those orders and kept their churches open.

But it was not a bad thing in itself that people were staying home and not going to church. There were potential gains in this.

Now that the churches are open let me outrageously say this: they should all be closed. Yes, every single church should shut down or revert to a place of authentic communal prayer (mentioned below) with no priests or ministers until the real crisis we are in passes.

This is an audacious and arrogant thing to say, or so it seems. In response, I remind you of these words of Christ:

But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth? (Luke: 18:8)

Given this prophecy of near-universal apostasy, and many other prophecies; given also the state of the world, you should at least admit the possibility that we are in the midst of that near-universal apostasy. Given that we live in a world so steeped in irrationality that the ineffectiveness of a new medicine is being blamed on the people who don’t take it, you should at least admit the possibility that there is a near-universal collapse in discernment and rational thought.

Could it be that we hear today of so much fakeness, so much fake news, so many lies, because the very thing that must be real, the reality on which all else depends, has been rendered fake?

Jesus goes on in Luke 18 to speak of the Pharisee and the publican:

The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. [emphasis mine]

Such important words for us to ponder!

Are we those Pharisees? Are we more attached to our external works of prayer, to our churches, than to God, than to the faith itself? Have we abandoned our dear Lord in the most unlikely of places — the place we call a holy sanctuary and a temple of God?

Oh, most mysterious and paradoxical God! Is it possible that just when we think ourselves most holy, we are committing grave sin?

Oh, God of miracles! God of strange works! Is it possible we are declining the miracles you extend to us now? Could it be that we only need to cast aside our pride to accept them?

Let me quickly review the errors represented by churches today:

*Protestantism The name says it all. Protestantism is deformed Catholicism. Everything good in it, including the Bible, came from the Catholic Church. Everything bad in it produces ceaseless division, confusion and heresy. A few good books on this subject for Protestants can be found here, here, and here.

*Orthodoxy The name is misleading. Orthodox churches do not even make a pretense of universality. They are plainly nationalistic. They cannot trace their origins to Christ and the apostles. [I apologize for the brevity here and realize this is extremely inadequate to the subject.]

*New Catholicism The pseudo-Catholicism that emerged almost 2,000 years after Christ with the Vatican II revolution formally starting in the 1960’s denies many tenets of the Catholic Church. It is the faith you will find in your local parish. Judge a tree by its fruits. It has resulted in an unprecedented, worldwide falling away and worldwide moral decline. Vatican II has entailed a series of papal pretenders. “Pope” Francis is no pope. Neither was Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Paul VI , or John XXIII. “New Catholics,” almost to a man, accuse those who are against the Vatican II revolution of “rigidity.” But are they not guilty of a dangerous rigidity in refusing to reckon with this tree? (For those unfamiliar with the doctrinal changes, I will include some links here shortly.)

*Traditional Catholicism Here we have schismatic sects without the necessary communion with a pope in Rome or chapels that take their marching orders from the “popes” and, whether intentionally or not, mask their allegiance to Vatican II with incense and Latin prayers. The schismatic sects are similar to Protestantism in the division and confusion they produce. Please see this new excellent post by Theresa Standfill Benns at Betrayed Catholics about “traditionalism” and please disregard the sneers and defamation against her. Further readings can be found in this post.

William Strojie wrote not long after Vatican II:

“However corrupt the hierarchy, it is both foolish and perilous to look for rescue and the sacraments outside the juridical order established by Christ.  To do so would be to follow one who comes in his own name, without authority.  No matter what office such a person might have held at one time, or however much he may profess Catholic orthodoxy, or how holy he may contrive to appear, such a one ought not to be trusted, for the Church was founded on Authority, not on spiritual elitism.”

I am very aware of the hard work, time, money and other sacrifices that go into keeping churches in all of these categories afloat. I am very aware that many churchgoers are virtuous and more saintly than I am. It is not for me to judge the sincerity, intentions or ultimate disposition of any of the adherents of these misleading and dangerous “Christianities.” I know God sees the true intentions. Prayer is always superior to works. And the true sacraments from the one Holy Catholic Church are essential and cannot be replaced.  But abandoned by our shepherds as we are, perhaps all that energy could be spent in Christianizing America, in helping others understand the meaning of the Incarnation and that faith is not something practiced once a week, but is a revolutionizing force in one’s personal and public life. Anyway, it is only for me to warn against this “spiritual elitism,” against being more attached to choirs and social opportunities, to emotional consolations and routine than to the truth. Is there not some sense in God taking away consoling ritual, after so much betrayal on the part of Catholics, Protestants and the “Orthodox,” and in His leaving us seemingly naked before His Omnipotence?

It is my duty to give you the solution. And that is, prayer at home, under the guidance of the true Catholic Church, and fidelity to the faith in all its authentic doctrines and teachings. (Many good basic posts here.)

One must execute one’s Sunday duties by praying the Mass (from pre-1962 Missals) faithfully. The fact that this is the greatest poetry ever written will help you along. Prayer at home will, we are assured, result in more spiritual graces than prayer before a false altar. Will you be lonely without church? Will you have no community to help you raise your children? Important questions. Please let God provide the answers and the remedies, which He most certainly will. Take one step at a time. We are able to administer the Sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony ourselves. We should make acts of Spiritual Communion and Perfect Contrition in lieu of Mass and Confession, as Catholics have done in all ages when priests were not available.

All this is tough news, but it is news you can definitely bear. It is, in the end, very good news.

May God forgive us for our sins. Merry Christmas everyone!

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