“Teach
this to your children”

“Train
up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not
depart from it.”
(Prov. 22.6)
When Catholics
are not Catholic
It has become increasingly “correct” not
only to ignore the past, but to repudiate it — even expunge it
(except, of course, when the past provides fodder for grievances
that may have once existed, were redressed, and are no longer
authentic — in this sense it is the sine qua non of the intolerable
liberal/progressive mindset — which is intolerant of any tolerance
of intolerance …). What had informed us as a nation articulated in
moral terms inseparable from its Christian origins has not simply
become banal but abhorrent. “This is not the America we knew", we
may say in any nostalgic discourse on the present state of this
country. It is a different America that has become the symbolic and
ultimately hollow statuary of an increasingly secular and “liberal”
— even Leftist America.
This especially pertains to the role of religion in the public
polity … if it is allowed at all in public discourse — and
increasingly it is not; and not just religion in general (as we
find, say, in China and North Korea), but specific religions:
Christian religions in general and Catholicism in particular. Islam
— because it is feared by our politicians and policy-makers — is
largely exempt and accrues to itself a special protected status much
like the “protected-class” of homosexual citizens — against whom
alone incivility is actionable, falling under the protection of
special “civil-rights” not accorded other citizens.
That the official Catholic Church (as distinct from self-adulating
liberal bishops, priests, Religious, and nominal Catholics) is the
primary obstacle to many of the pernicious policies of this present
administration is unmistakable. The Catholic Church is the sole
moral impediment to the perversities (social, moral, and political)
that are legislated against the American people. There are brave and
uncompromising bishops and Catholics … but relatively speaking they
are few.
52%
It is significant that up to 52 % of Catholics voted for Barack
Obama and endorsed the platform of the Democratic Party in the last
two presidential elections. This platform endorsed abortion,
wide-spread contraception, the propagation of the homosexual (LGBT)
agenda, the HHS Mandate that violates the most fundamental principle
of the rights of conscience, radical feminism, judicial activism and
legislation, embryo destructive research, human cloning, and
rescinded (refused to enforce) the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
describing it as unconstitutional (in their opinion — I will restate
that: in their opinion) … to name a few.
In so many words, half of all Catholics turned their back on their
Faith in favor of popular social sentiment. Perhaps this is too
broad a statement: let us say, rather, that those who identified
themselves as Catholics did so — irrespective of their misinformed
and deeply dissident understanding of their own Catholic Faith. That
is to say, many of those who identify themselves as Catholic (those
in accord with the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church) …
really are not. This statement will infuriate these “Catholics” who
bitterly (and illogically) contend that their Faith and their
politics are separable; that the authority of the Church and the
teachings of Jesus Christ do not extend to the political polls or,
for that matter, to their own sexual lives; that there are civic and
personal boundaries beyond which neither Christ nor His Church may
trespass, and beyond which they possess no competent authority.
Just as there is a separation of Church and State in America,
there is a separation of Faith and politics —and most fundamentally
(and most illogically) a separation between Faith and the very
articles and dogmas specific to it and which themselves inform it as
a specific, a unique, religion distinct from any other. These
“Catholics” are, we may say, “partly-Catholic” — they “agree with
some, or few, but not all” of the Church’s magisterial teachings.
They are Catholic in much the way that the new capitalist
entrepreneurs in communist China are Communist. That Capitalism and
Communism are incompatible economic and political models does not
appear to influence what they think and believe, let alone what they
do. In what sense, we are forced to ask, are they Communists at all
if everything they do is predicated on what is clearly Capitalism? A
rich communist is the equivalent of a poor capitalist — or an
atheist Catholic. It is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Catholics, Communists, and Capitalists
It is not that we fail to recognize this contradiction (logically
we cannot), but that we deliberately refuse to recognize the
incompatibility at all. It is, at best, a thin but resilient veneer
much like the meniscus enclosing a bead of water upon a smooth waxed
surface: were logic permitted to penetrate the social meniscus that
supports this bead of otherwise mutually exclusive ideologies it
would collapse under the artificial and unsustainable contradiction.
By policy and a presumed social expedience we deny the needle of
logic its due, even legislate against it, because it would be
inconvenient to and incompatible with the purpose (the policy,
really) at hand.
There is only one way to reconcile incompatibilities: ignore
them. That is the preference of 50% of Catholics at the polls: “I am
a faithful Catholic, but in the way of social issues I am an
atheist.” It is the same logic we see at work in China: “I am a
faithful communist, but in the way of monetary issues and real
estate appropriation I am a capitalist.” Wang Jianlin, originally of
Sechuan, reportedly has $15.1 billion in assets. According to Forbes
magazine, "China boasts a record 152 members of the 2014 edition of
the annual Forbes Billionaires ..." 3 China is officially
a communist country; indeed, the largest … and wealthiest. What of
the dissonance between the official and the actual? We ignore it,
insisting that China is a Communist country. The Leadership
Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in America and the Chinese
billionaires appear to have much in common. They are both among “the
faithful” of their putative ideologies, however irreconcilable their
conduct is with their ostensible professions (one political, “I am a
committed communist … billionaire”, and one religious, “I am a
professed Catholic Religious … Pro-abortion sister”).
Ignorance as the Propaedeutic to Policy
As we had said earlier, the only one way to reconcile
incompatibilities is to ignore them. Of course, this is not
reconciling them at all … it is merely methodologically suspending
them. Acknowledged incompatibilities paralyze us. We can only move
beyond them by suspending them. This, of course, is the implicit
acknowledgment that we recognize them — and therein lays the guilt.
Even according to the scandalously liberal National Catholic
Reporter (NCR):
“We found that half of adult Catholics (50 percent) know the
church’s teaching regarding the real presence and half do
not. We also found that close to two-thirds of adult
Catholics (63 percent) believe that “at the consecration
during a Catholic Mass, the bread and wine really become the
body and blood of Jesus Christ.” 2
Upon reading a thoughtfully written article in Crisis Magazine
titled Saving Catholic Culture from Destruction 1 by Michael Tamara,
which I encourage you to read, three verses from Holy Scripture
immediately come to mind — and one from a very early Church Father:
First, the Biblical:
“Lay up these my words in your
hearts and minds, and hang them for a sign on your hands,
and place them between your eyes. Teach your children that
they meditate on them, when thou sittest in thy house, and
when thou walkest on the way, and when thou liest down and
risest up.” (Deut. 11.18-19)
“The Lord hath sworn truth to David,
and he will not make it void: of the fruit of thy womb I
will set upon thy throne. If thy children will keep thy
covenant, and these my testimonies which I shall teach them:
Their children also for evermore shall sit upon thy throne.”
(Ps. 13.11-12)
“Train up a child in the way he should
go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
(Prov. 22.6)
And from Saint Ephraim the Syrian (306-373 A.D.)
“Do nothing at all without the beginning of prayer. With
the Sign of the living Cross, seal all your doings, my son.
Go not forth from the door of your house till you have
signed the Cross. Whether in eating or in drinking, whether
in sleeping or in waking, whether in your house or on the
road, or again in the season of leisure, neglect not this
sign; for there is no guardian like it. It shall be unto you
as a wall, in the forefront of all your doings. And teach
this to your children, that heedfully they be conformed to
it.”
The admittedly lengthy preface to this article has been
articulated simply as a preface to a much more important issue, a
fundamentally deeper issue that Holy Scripture — and Saint Ephraim —
brings to relief. It is an issue of failure, specifically the
failure to hand on, to deliver (tradere) Sacred Tradition,
together with the unequivocal dogma and indisputable teaching
authority through which it was articulated.
Resolute Refusal
Let us be absolutely simple: since Vatican II, Catholics have not
just failed to hand on, to deliver, their Catholic Faith to their
children — they have resolutely refused to. They had lost the Faith,
retained a diminishing similitude to it, churned their children
through useless and often heretical CCD and Catechetical programs in
which they learned nothing of it, and flocked to the polls to
support every issue contrary to authentic Catholic teaching. They
had pre-marital sex to which their parents turned a blind eye or
simply winked, and then had the abortions that followed. Abortions
require abortuaries and necessitated the abattoir, the
slaughter-house, of Planned Parenthood — which then took the
responsibility which you had abdicated to teach your children, and
subsequently taught them everything … including every sexual
perversity … from primary school on.
You simply paid the money to psychiatrists and psychologists to
help your children sort out a sexual identity crisis that would
never have existed had you done your work and kept your Faith
instead of leaving it to the government and NGOs. When your children
committed suicide you scratched your head and wondered why … when
they developed incurable STDs you paid for the prescriptions; when
they had abortions, you drove them there … and comforted them with
lies that their lives would be the same. And if you lived long
enough to be “could-have-been-grandparents”, you may have watched
your daughter fall into irrecoverable depression in the prime of her
life ... and you may have even waked her at your local funeral
parlor. You were “correct” … and she correctly died. You may have
grandchildren you know nothing of because you told your son that
condoms were the answer to the question you did not have the courage
to answer forthrightly. Or perhaps he acquired AIDS from another man
or women, or both — because sexual promiscuity is “correct” in your
culture, or the culture you ruined, and after looking at the mess,
dismissed it altogether with all that had once accompanied it and
was noble and good and demanding.
You brought ruin to yourself, and now you bring it to your
children that all may equally perish. Wasn’t it all about “equality”
anyway … “acceptance” and “tolerance?” When you decided that there
was nothing that was “right” or “wrong” … only “different” and
“acceptable”? Consequences? What are they? Haven’t we genetically
engineered them to our liking yet? And there is, after all, no God,
you arrogantly proclaim — until you hope that there is when you or
your children die.
These are harsh, severe sayings; cruel pronouncements, you say? They
are far less cruel and infinitely less harsh than realities that
will come to your door — unless you teach your children as Holy
Mother the Church once taught you before you despised Her in your
arrogance and vanity; perhaps as cruel as the government and social
correctitude that brought you to the sad state in which you find
yourself today.
When you lost God you lost everything. Everything. Your children,
your country, your freedom, and ultimately your soul. This is the
cruelest consequence of all.
But you are “enlightened”, “educated”, “progressive” … an
“intellectual” — aren’t you? And these are the things of children.
Yes? Would that they were only of children ….
The Remedy
Oh, yes! The remedy! Teach your own children better than your
parents had taught you. Teach them authentic Catholic doctrine, and
not the prevailing and perverse social sentiments that will poison
their minds, depredate their bodies, and cost them their immortal
souls. You may have lost yours already. But give your kids a break.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and
when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22.6) …
the way that you did.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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1
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/saving-catholic-culture-from-destruction?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29
2
http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-america/knowledge-and-belief-about-real-presence
3
http://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2014/03/03/2014-forbes-billionaires-list-growing-chinas-10-richest/

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