The Third Rail and the Kingdom of Heaven
“HARD
SAYINGS”
There
are many … “hard sayings” … in Holy Scripture.
That is to say, there are many passages, parables, and other
vital teachings of Christ and Holy Mother Church that,
if we heard them from the pulpit in Church — and
we don’t — we would rather not hear.
We will get into some, and we promise you that your modern,
perverse, and effete social sensitivities — together
with your state-mandated and carefully crafted (that
is to say, “educationally endorsed” and brutally indoctrinated
social correctitude — will be deeply offended, even scandalized,
and you will be outraged that the Church and her God
so much as uttered them — even made them obligatory!
Following John XXIII’s infamous “aggiornamento,” or “bringing
up to date” what had never been outdated — the
Catholic Church, following Vatican II, largely expunged concepts,
doctrines, and even dogma deemed “offensive” to the non-Catholic
world, from Catholic teaching — and while these core beliefs
are clearly and repeatedly inscribed in Holy Scripture,
Patristics, and the Sacred Deposit of Faith, you will rarely hear reference to them: not at Mass, not in any
homily, not in CCD or Religious Education, not in Catholic seminaries,
and certainly not from the contorted, Post-Catholic-Conciliar-Church
of Jorge Bergoglio hammer-stamped with the Roman numeral II
following the name “Vatican.”
Vatican II muzzled God — and instead of His untainted Word,
gave us a “revisionist”, sanitized, and vastly-abridged rendition
of the Bible more aligned with the prevailing values of “the
World” which ever hated Christ and those who followed Him
(“If the
world hates you, know that it hated Me before you.”
St. John 15.18). This is not to say that such “hard” and displeasing
verses have been deleted from the authoritative Catholic
Bible following Vatican II —but practically speaking they may
as well have been. Such “uncomfortable”
verses are seldom appealed to or so much as mentioned
in any contemporary Catholic religious discourse, either
at the pulpit or in the seminary. Sin has largely become a secular
solecism: a faux pax, a gaffe, a breach of social and
environmental etiquette.
Order of Battle
In the Book of
Job we are reminded that
“The
life of man upon earth is a warfare”
(Job 7.1) Holy Mother Church understood this from the beginning,
and testimony to this enmity between the World and God is inscribed
the in the blood of the
Martyrs. Holy Mother Church ever reminded us of this perpetual
Order of Battle and the array of our enemies: The
World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
But that is not
taught anymore either.
When it was taught, it is notable that the
“World” came first (ideologies, social remedies,
cultures, inculturation, multi-culturalism, science, theories,
politics, parties, public policies, gender theories, hyper-egalitarianism,
sexual fluidity …). It was the logically necessary antagonist
to which the Church first succumbed. Once the “Windows of
the Church were thrown open” (John XXIII) to the World,
the miasma of the World flowed in while
the
Faithful and the Religious flowed out.
After “the World” subverted the Church, the second onslaught quickly
followed: “The Flesh” — “Free Love” … the mantra
of the “groovy” 60’s and 70’s which ushered in abortion, STDs,
drugs, derangement, “tune in, turn, on, and drop out”, hippies
and “acid” — leaving ravaged bodies and minds as so many tatters
of a concept once deemed a “Person” made in the image of God.
How “devishly” clever it was, as though following some diabolically
Hegelian dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) — which brings
us to the third point and our third nemesis: “the Devil”
— who, of course, has never left, and who fanned the flames
of the accumulating madness that ensued — and now may even be
wearing pontificals in Rome.
Like Hell (his
abode — to which no one goes after Vatican II), he does not
exist anymore either. As it has been often stated, his greatest
achievement is his convincing us that he does not exist (of
course with the help of the academic “periti” and non-Catholics
who advised and directed the apparently stultified Council fathers).
If satan does not exist, eo ipso, Hell is a fiction,
too. Fictions are, in fact, routinely homilized at Mass (“Jesus
loves you just the way you are”) — but not these
fictions. Why speak of what does not exist and which, therefore,
has no influence upon you, let alone an eschatological bearing.
How to Recognize
600 Volt Homilies at once:
-
They do not
assure us of our salvation
-
They do not
canonize us before we are dead. The question of our
trajectory, and to what eternal habitation, still remains
open
-
The devil
exists and lusts after your soul and will
do anything and everything to see you rot in Hell with him
-
Hell exists and
people go there
-
Mortal Sin is real and many people are guilty of it. It
is the death of the soul to God. If you die in the state
of Mortal Sin, you will go to Hell.
-
Holy Confession is the ordinary and necessary Sacrament
for the remission of your sins.
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A “third-rail”
homily would begin with, let us say, Saint Paul’s address to
the Philippians:
“With fear and
trembling work out your salvation”
1 — to
mention nothing of the numerous admonitions from our Blessed
Lord that do not merely “suggest”, but clearly warn us in
no uncertain terms of eschatological realities like Hell
that we may find both appalling and unacceptable — while being
undeniably true.
Why do I call such
Homilies and Biblical verses “Third Rail”? It is called Being “Cancelled”
Simple: if, as a pastor or priest, you so much as
touch upon them you are, in a manner of speaking, inviting death:
you place your vocation in mortal danger. Not because you are
not doing what Christ wants, but because you are not
doing what your bishop wants — and since
2013, even what your Pope Francis wants!
Speak of such things
as Mortal Sin and the subsequent death of the soul to God, of
the Last Judgment and the wide path that leads to Hell which
so many take (St. Matthew 7.13-14), of obedience to God
rather than submission to the World and your very life as a
priest is liable to be forfeited. Your stubborn obedience to
what Jesus Christ calls you to do, and even demands
that you do as a priest, may result in your being “cancelled”
as a priest (as they call it in these evil days of the pontificate
of Francis): losing your faculties as a priest, being unable
to celebrate Mass or administer the Sacraments: you may even
be de-frocked!
Will this be
because
you have broken the Laws of God and His Holy Church?
No! Because you have kept them! All because you
did not toe the line that Francis drew in the sand and that
your bishop forced you to cross in your obedience to Jesus Christ:
to proclaim the Gospel “in
season and out of season”
(1 Cor. 9.16; 2 Timothy 4.2-4).
If you continue
to enunciate not simply what is pleasing and easy
in the Gospels and the Epistles, but to proclaim all
that is in the Gospels, all that is in the Epistles,
the difficult to hear, the hard to do, the uncomfortable to
consider — in a word the entire truth —
all of it, not just some of it; not just what
appeals to the soft and the effeminate, but to the hard and
the manly — you will be punished, you will be broken
... and if you do not yield, you will be discarded!
Your meager means of subsistence will be ruthlessly taken from
you, leaving you with nothing. In the meanwhile, pedophile priests
who wantonly prey upon the young and innocent are winked at
by these same bishops, and are promoted through the ranks because,
whatever their perversity, they have demonstrated their unswerving
allegiance to “the cause,” which
is pan-ecumenism, and the man, Jorge Bergoglio in Rome, who
can, with a nod, elevate or crush their careers at will. It
is somehow fitting that the very “careerism” that Francis pretends
to abhor he most zealously promotes. Cardinal (“Kiss me with
Your Mouth”) Víctor Manuel Fernández of the now Congregation
of the Doctrine of the Faith is a good case in point.
For
the traditional Catholic laity who, understanding the Scriptural
topics of conversion, repentance, penance, Hell, sin, and so
on, to be part of the canon of Sacred Scripture, and the patrimony
of the Church Fathers, these realities constitute vital dimensions
in their spiritual lives. They find themselves, in turn, scandalized
by this deliberate omission of Church teaching on these
topics in homilies and in religious discussions, and justly
feel that there is a pressing need for them to be addressed
and that they must be addressed. But these Catholics
are often understood by their peers and as often by their pastors as — to use Francis’s
disparaging term —
“rigid.” They are to be dismissed as backward, inflexible,
pre-Conciliar,
pre-Vatican II; not aligned with “the
times;” in other words, not open to “understanding”
the hidden wisdom and vitality to be discovered in pagan gods
such as Pachamama revered by Francis in the Vatican Gardens
together with other false-but-ecumenically-correct-gods, and
a commitment to and reverence for “Mother Earth”, and “the environment”.
“Third Rail
verses” in Holy Scripture, in short, are verses to
be avoided at all costs: they are fatal to the one
touching upon them much as the third rail in an American
subway system exceeds 600 volts and, if you simply touch upon
it, will instantly electrocute you. Such verses, of course,
precede Third-Rail Homilies — to be avoided for the same reasons.
Three
of the Four Last Things
Death, Judgment, and Hell (…
but not Heaven).
Few wish to hear
of the first three. Your pastor knows this. To preach about
or to dwell upon such verses is likely to cause “discomfort”
— indignation and perhaps even “outrage” within — and consequently
diminish — the congregation. They will go elsewhere,
and find another parish and another priest who
will assure them of their salvation (despite what Christ
says), their invincible goodness, and their being “The lights
of the world” and “The salt of the earth.” Such parishes and
priests, of course, abound.
“Not Open”
Any hint that Heaven
may be closed to some, if not many, is mocked
as “pre-Vatican II nonsense” — despite Christ’s telling
us so:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and
the way is easy that leads to destruction, and
those who enter by it are many … [and] the
gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life,
and those who find it are few.” (St. Matthew
7.13-14) |
This is but one of
many, many, third-rail verses found in all
four Gospels and most of the Epistles (Letters).
“Surely,” we console
ourselves, “a good, merciful, and forgiving God would not allow
such things to happen!” To which we reply:
Why, then, did He say them?
We do not seek
God, but a heaven with a god to our liking and made in
our image. This is another way of saying “We ourselves
will be our own gods for we are more merciful,
more loving, more forgiving, more just,
than the God we find in Sacred Scripture. We will not bend our
knee before that God, but our own god: ourselves!
We will find or make priests and churches that ‘affirm us’,
comfort us, and tell us that our illusions are realities or
that reality is just an illusion.”
This is further to say that we will continue to maintain the
illusions and fabrications that comfort us, but cannot possibly
save us — rather than defer to “hard sayings” which are
enunciated to the end of saving us and bringing us to genuine
happiness (Heaven).
Other factors enter into this obstinate refusal to accept
the “hard sayings”, and we point to them with the deepest sorrow:
these “hard sayings” do not simply involve us — they
involve those we have loved — who have died.
Some of them, perhaps most of them did not accept these “hard
sayings” either. Some of them led extraordinarily sinful lives,
heedless of God and man. Some were little more than evil. Many
simply did not believe, or would not relinquish what they perceived
to be their freedom to do as they wish, or simply scorned religion
altogether. But we loved them — and love always invests us in
the being of another. Hence our pain.
All or None
Nevertheless, a
choice was placed before them, as it is placed before us now:
to accept the “hard sayings” as earnestly as we accept the more
comforting ones. We cannot choose which teachings of Christ
we will accept any more than we can choose what we wish to be
real or true. We must accept all of them or none of them.
God does not tamper with our freedom, nor interfere with our
choices. We are free to accept or reject, but in either case
our choice is total. We cannot accept or reject the part without
accepting or rejecting the whole, for the parts are integral
constituents of the whole.
Much more to the point, the terms are not of our own making
— they have been divinely instituted. Salvation is not
a referendum any more than Heaven is a democracy. The means
of attaining it have been clearly defined by Christ — as well
as the means of losing it. The choice is yours alone.
“Lest they also come into this
place of torments”
To return to the
discussion of those we love and who have died, here we encounter
the most painful legacy imaginable: our realization that the
road they chose was the one that was “broad and easy” … To imagine
them in torment everlasting is beyond our ability to comprehend
without verging on despair.
“How
wicked of you,” you tell me, “to compound the grief of those
in bereavement! Have they not suffered enough by the loss of
one loved?”
No. It is not wicked. It is painful beyond words. It is sorrowful
beyond description. None of us may presume salvation, for
to do so is to presume upon God’s mercy, itself a mortal sin!
Indeed, I identify more with the departed than the surviving.
I have no assurance of salvation, for I refuse to presume on
God’s mercy and may yet myself be accounted among the lost —
even as Saint Paul himself feared. (1 Corinthians 9.26)
Should I fear less?
There are indeed those who go to Hell — and likely many
(or Christ is a liar). We must allow this realization to
motivate us with all the more urgency to bring those still with
us to Christ, lest they, too, choose “the road that is broad
and easy” and add to our sorrow even greater sorrow still.
This was the whole point of the Parable of Lazarus and the
Rich Man: the rich man in Hell implores Abraham
“send him [Lazarus] to my father’s house, for I have five brethren,
that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of
torments.”
(St. Luke 16. 27-28)
Can
we do less?
We call our
children out of a burning house — we will suffer burns ourselves
and incredible pain to save them — but when they verge on a
Lake of Fire that is the Second Death
1 from which there is no return
... we say, we do, nothing. We do not call
them back. We do not rush in horror to bring them
back! Why? How is this possible?
So much for our own convictions; for the measure of
our own faith!
Now we come to
it: the painful recognition that our love for them
is not greater than our fear of the frowning face of “the World”
... that no longer has any room for God ...
or His children.
Say it is not so!
Pay attention
to the third rail!
Ignore
it at your peril.
Geoffrey K. Mondello Editor Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
___________________________
1 Apocalypse 19-20
Totally
Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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