My Rant/Musing on the Feast of St. Monica

The letter I sent to my sister, regarding the current scandals in the Church.  

"I feel like you are assuming I am defending the Church and that we are in this discussion of defending vs not defending the Church and it's actions.  THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS IS!  I am NOT defending the Church, and I'm as mad as you!!!   I couldn't sleep last night I was so upset   I do admit, when that Grand Jury report came out, I was repulsed and disgusted, but I wasn't surprised, because I knew it wasn't a NEW scandal.  It was the same scandal we already knew about in Boston and Spokane and other places around the country, from the same time period, just in a different place and a greater scope.  That stuff all happened 30-70 years ago. And I knew that there had been reforms in 2002, hopefully addressing the issue, so it wouldn't continue.  Children wouldn't be put at risk again.  But then, this new McCarrick thing makes me realize that abuses are STILL GOING ON.  Maybe it looks different now because of the reforms.  Maybe it targets young but adult men in seminary rather than young children, because that's not considered criminal.  But it's still there, and it's STILL HAPPENING.  That makes me SICK.  And disgusted.  And angry.  And betrayed.  By even the highest levels.

The question is, and the question Rob and I keep asking is... what do we DO about it, as lay people?   When you see leaders acting in such ways??? Do we leave?  Do we fight?   We don't just passively sit by.  Rob wants a revolution, but that doesn't look like a political revolution would.  We don't rise up with guns. Not in the Church.  I know that my trust is in CHRIST, and not in men.  Men fail all the time.  Even men that aren't supposed to.  The lifeblood of the Church is the sacraments, not men.  And the sacraments, even if performed by evil men, are still valid.  The gospel yesterday was perfect.  "Lord, where would I go?  You hold the keys to eternal life."  Even if I wanted to leave the Church... where would I go??   Who else holds the deposit of faith, and the Eucharist?  That's what I can't leave.  But I can and WILL fight to purify Christ's Church, even if it means we lose 75% of our members.  If it's small and meek instead of powerful... then it will get back to what it was in the beginning anyway.  A persecuted Church, but a faithful one.  If we worship in nearly empty buildings, so be it.

I told Rob that the way we as lay people act is ANGRY, yes.  The Bride of Christ is soiled.  But then, we become SAINTS.  Because Saints are the spiritual soldiers that the Church needs now to fight its battles.  And we hold each and every person accountable for their actions, because dang it... those children didn't deserve what they got.  Those seminarians didn't deserve what they got.  So we demand accountability.  We demand JUSTICE.

Just so you know definitively how I feel, and not just ASSUME that I'm defending the Church.  I am NOT.  But I will not leave it.  I will fight for it.  Like I fight for my family.  Like I fight for my marriage.  We fight for the worthwhile things.  We fight to make them better.  We don't leave.

I often wondered if I had lived during the time of the Reformation, knowing the abuses of the Church, how I would've responded.  Would I have stayed?  Or left?  Now I know.  I would have stayed.  I will stay.  But I will NOT be content to leave things as they are.  

Today is the Feast of St. Monica.  St. Monica is the patron saint of difficult marriages and victims of adultery.  The Bride of Christ, the Church, has been soiled, and failed her marriage vows.  St. Monica is the patron saint of wayward children.  We children of God have lost our way.  But St. Monica is also the patron saint of conversions.  Our family of Christ needs a conversion of heart!!!  

St. Monica, pray for us! "

And this is appropo.  From Pope Emeritus Benedict, back in 1969 when he was Father Ratzinger.

"The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality....From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges....But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship."

THIS.

I didn't write this, but I wish I had. It expresses exactly how I feel.

There is a tremendous – and warranted – outcry of rage and betrayal in the Church right now.

I’m not talking about the usual suspects in the media and the voices coming from the cafeteria line, either. I’m talking about the men and women who have sacrificed and stood steadfast, serving the Church with their professional lives, settling for smaller salaries and raised eyebrows at cocktail parties when they disclose their line of work. The little old ladies who are daily communicants. The blue collar workers who pray a Rosary on their lunch breaks and fast on bread and water on Wednesdays. The underpaid Catholic school teachers and the harassed Catholic healthcare professionals.

In other words, the faithful.

The ones raising larger than average families on smaller than average budgets. Refusing to cave to the extraordinary societal pressure to relieve the emptiness of their wombs at any cost, and opting for adoption or even childlessness over IVF. Bearing patiently the slings and arrows of public opinion when it comes time to defend the Church when her ways are not the world’s ways. Tossing aside the contraceptives and using NFP instead. Forgoing the “pleasures” of pornography and honoring their marriage vows. Remaining celibate and suffering in loneliness as an abandoned spouse or a same-sex attracted person. Sacrificing to educate their children in the Faith in the face of extraordinary difficulty. Refusing to reduce the immutable dignity of every single human person to an object to be used or discarded.

And defending Holy Mother Church with the ultimate gift – one’s fidelity to the Faith – even as the world around us spins farther into secular materialism.

Fathers, these children of your flocks are suffering. Suffering over the grievous injuries done to those other children, the ones named in the Pennsylvania report, the ones whose innocence was shattered, whose dignity was spat upon, who suffered in their very bodies the wounds of Christ tortured and crucified.

We cannot sleep for weeping over these images, crying out to heaven that men ordained to act in the person of Christ at the altar could also rape, pillage, and destroy the most innocent.

We need to hear from you.

We need to hear lamentation and rage, resolution and public penances. We must know that you stand on the side of Christ, crucified and risen. That even if your diocese is beyond a shadow of suspicion in August of 2018, your father’s heart breaks and your stomach roils in anger over what happened in our Church – no matter which diocese and no matter what year.

Many of us carried heavy hearts into Mass for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary yesterday, lifting red and swollen eyes to heaven during the readings and beseeching God for any answers, any explanation.

Too many of us – not all, but many – were met with deafening silence from the pulpits when the time for the homily arrived. The silence tore deeper into the wounds rent by the horrifying grand jury report; there was scarcely time for a scab to form over last month’s McCarrick revelations.

We need to hear from our fathers. We need to hear your anger, your shame, your outrage, your sorrow, and your profound and sincere resolution that this evil will be purged from the ranks of the Church hierarchy, no matter what the cost.

When someone intentionally injures or violates my child, even if – and perhaps especially if – I am not the cause of the injury, he or she can count on my swift and unapologetic rage.

We need to see your hearts, fathers. We need to see and hear our bishops doing public acts of reparation and penance, or resigning the privilege of office if the circumstances warrant it.

We need to hear our priests – especially our pastors – speaking uncompromisingly and unceasingly about what is happening, about the war zone we American Catholics find ourselves in, about the corruption and satanic violence within our own ranks, and about what is being done to bring about justice.

If your bishop hasn’t issued talking points yet or the diocesan-level HR department is cautioning restraint, damn the restraint. Your people are suffering, and they need to know their spiritual fathers are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

What can we, as lay people, do at a moment such as this?

Pray. Pray as you never have before. Pray a daily Rosary with your family, if you have one. With your spouse or significant other or roommate. Alone or with a recording, if you have nobody else to pray with. Ask especially for the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, St. Charles Lwanga (Google his martyrdom story) and St. Catherine of Siena.

Fast. Give up social media one day a week, or limit it to a few minutes a day. Get rid of one of the three or four platforms you’re using entirely, maybe. Offer up those pinpricks of dopamine denial for the cleansing of the Church, and for the souls of the victims living and deceased.

Purge your home of anything that is complicit with this culture of death. Vaguely pornographic media. Explicitly pornographic media. Showtime or HBO DirectTV or maybe even your high speed internet, if it’s an occasion of sin for you. Go through your library and destroy anything that is influenced by the occult. If your right arm causes you to sin, cut it off. We must be beyond reproach as Catholics going forward if we are to have any credibility with this world and, more importantly, with Christ.

Throw away your contraception. Your mind altering drugs. Your habit of gossip, of masturbation, of criticism, of getting drunk, of cheating “just a little” on your income taxes, of cheating on your spouse, of ignoring your children.

In other words, be a saint.

Our times call for great sanctity to counter this grave evil. And sinners like us, myself first and foremost, are the only material Our Lord has to work with.

Other practical suggestions:

Email, call, and write to your bishop’s office (and while you’re at it, to the Holy Father himself.) Be respectful and unrelenting in asking for a public meeting or an explanation of what your diocese is doing to address these evils. Ask your bishop what his plans are to clean up your local church if housekeeping needs to be done. Find out what measures are in place to protect youth and children and seminarians and old people and not so old people. Ask what standard of sexual integrity is set and maintained by the diocese of X. Do the same with your pastor. Be persistent. But love your Church enough to not stop until you get a satisfactory answer.

Tell your priest, once you’ve finished asking when his next related and excruciatingly clear homily will be preached, that you are praying for him. And then do so. Offer a specific act of penance every day for your priest. For any priest you know. Give up your daily coffee, your nightcap, your nighttime pleasure reading, a workout, salt on your food, etc. Do not leave our courageous priests and bishops unarmed in this time of agony for the Church. They are suffering as Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they need our prayers.

We have decided for our family, that to avoid even the appearance of scandal and to protect all parties involved, it is best to avoid ever putting our priest friends – or any priest – in a situation where they are alone with a child of ours. I’m not talking about casual one-on-one talks with Father on the playground during recess, but being alone in a car, in a closed room, in a private home, etc. We are also exceedingly cautious about whom we leave our children with, and take into consideration the circumstances of any home or place they’ll be visiting. Most abuse takes place within the context of the extended family or trusted circle of friends, and we have chosen to err on the side of potentially giving offense by being “too careful.”

May Christ Jesus in whom we place our trust and confidence convict in our hearts a profound sorrow for all who suffer, and a firm resolution to spend ourselves utterly in striving to prevent future evil.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Jenny Uebbing at "Mama Needs Coffee".

Thought for the day: Warmth

"Preserve the warmth of the family, because the warmth of the whole world cannot make up for it."

— St. Charbel Makhlouf

What I am Lacking

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend, and she said something profound that has stuck with me.   We were talking about I don't know what, but the concept of "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" was brought up.  Which I have always understood as a good rule to live by, even if I don't practice it very well.  But SHE said "I don't just want to only SAY nice things to people, I only want to THINK nice things about people."    And that's completely different! Which took me aback, because I'd never really thought about it before.

In my head, I seem to have a running commentary about everything.  I make judgements about the world, and often see, and internally put on trial, the flaws and annoyances of others.  When I choose not to speak on those, I feel like I am being "good" for biting my tongue.  Quite honestly, that's hard enough to do sometimes, merely staying silent.  But if I am to TRULY be Christ-like, it's not enough to judge internally, and keep silent outwardly.  I need to see through God's eyes, and HE sees us through the eyes of LOVE.  Even the annoying, selfish, irritating people around us. He sees stark reality, He sees TRUTH, but He also sees through mercy, and grace.   I WANT to see the good in those around me.  Because maybe if I concentrate on the good instead of the imperfection, maybe then I help to increase the good?  Not to deny the frailities, and never to white-wash evil, but to concentrate on what helps others to grow into the person God sees them as, and maybe along the way, help myself to grow into the person God wants ME to be, too.

This is tough stuff.  I am not good at it.  At all.  So today, this is my prayer.  Lord, help me to see others as You see them, and to love them, imperfections and all - just as you do.

Thought of the Day: On Trust

"We trust ourselves to a doctor because we suppose he knows his business. He orders an operation which involves cutting away part of our body and we accept it. We are grateful to him and pay him a large fee because we judge he would not act as he does unless the remedy were necessary, and we must rely on his skill. Yet we are unwilling to treat God in the same way! It looks as if we do not trust His wisdom and are afraid He cannot do His job properly. We allow ourselves to be operated on by a man who may easily make a mistake—a mistake which may cost us our life—and protest when God sets to work on us. If we could see all He sees we would unhesitatingly wish all He wishes."

— Fr. Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure