My platoon was on a tank range while another unit set up a display of
the new Abrams, M-1 tank for visiting dignitaries. It was magnificent!!!
Much sleeker than the M-60's we were using. Lower to the ground, faster, for
a tanker or armored cavalryman, it was a thing of beauty. Going up to it, I
noticed that even the armor was roughened, I guessed to make it easier to
camouflage. However, when I brushed up against it, a large clump of painted,
dried mud, fell off, making a very visible blemish on this otherwise pristine
display. Ticked off, the officer in charge quickly got an enlisted man to
'touch up' the blemish before the dignitaries arrived. Apologizing, I later
found out that, not only was it given a quick paint job, but the thing had to
be towed to the site because the engine froze up. In short, it was a 'dog
and pony show'. The tank looked great form afar, but if one looked closely,
it was a mess. In fact, the only reason why the dignitaries knew that this
was a great looking tank, was because someone said it was. (The M-1 has
since gone on to prove it's worth)
We see a lot of 'dog and pony' shows today. Things we think are true
simply because someone tells us they are, but closer inspection would show us
the blemishes. Thing is, more often than not, we just take another's word
for it.
In colonial America, for example, the cry to rally the people to revolt
was "No taxation without representation." The facts were that representation
in Parliament was the last thing we wanted. We'd be one lone voice in a
large assembly. Hardly the ability to change things. So when Benjamin
Franklin went to England, he was told point blank NOT to accept Parliamentary
representation if it was offered.
Today, we see much the same thing. We see and hear views and teachings
which seem fine on the surface, but merely cover ignorance, error, and in
some cases, deception, handed down with authoritarian ruthlessness. Now for
many, they'd say I was speaking about the 'authoritarian, patriarchal'
Church. But in reality, I'm speaking of the, so called, modernist, spirit of
Vatican II, enlightened, tolerant dissidents.
Now before anyone thinks I'm just being nasty, let me explain.
We hear how we have to allow all thoughts and ideas. No problem with
that, overall. The Church has always encouraged people to contemplate God,
especially in respect to the times and places they live. That is the 'job'
of the theologian, to help explain God to man. However, today, we hear a
different voice from many theologians.
If they make an error (no problem since everyone makes mistakes, that's
how we learn), they refuse to acknowledge that they may have made a mistake.
No, the Church is wrong, not them.
This was the problem with the 'theology' of people like Martin Luther and
Matthew Fox (New Age concept of the Cosmic Christ) The problem is, like
Protestantism, that if 'they' are right and the Church is wrong (and 'they'
rarely agree) then we don't get unity, but division and confusion. To ease
this problem, many have adopted the notion that ALL views are equally valid.
However, they will never accept the Church's view so obviously not ALL views
are equally valid in their eyes. As one person told me, "Catholics have the
right to create their own spirituality, their own theology." If that is
true, then why did he call orthodox spirituality and theology wrong, and I
was ignorant and backwards for believing it? IF truth is relative and then
one cannot say that orthodoxy is wrong. However, if orthodoxy is true, it
CAN say relativism is true. But the dissident doesn't see that. Instead
they often find themselves working to isolate, ridicule, and slander the
faithful Catholic. The Common Ground Project failed simply because groups
like Call To Action wouldn't discuss but preferred to dictate.
"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of
stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant,
abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman,
implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.
For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak
women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to
anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and
Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt
mind and counterfeit faith; but they will not get very far, for their folly
will be plain to all, as was that of those two men" (2 Timothy 3:1-9).
"Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of
making truth the test. It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look
well, according to a real test. It is pride to think that a thing looks illm,
because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.
{The Common Man, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1950, p. 254}
We hear such comments as "The Church is hypocritical, anti-woman,
because it doesn't address issues pertinent to women." But if one looks
closely, the 'issues' they really seek is the Church to change it's teachings
on artificial contraception and abortion. The issue is presented as one of
fairness, but, like the early revolutionaries illustrated above, fairness is
not what they are really after.
We hear how anti-woman the Church is because it won't (can't) ordain
women as priests. Yet, from their own literature and conferences; "Is it a
dream to get a piece of the clerical pie even if we choke on it?"
(Schussler-Fiorenza; one of the co-founders of the Women's Ordination
Conference) In fact, Donna Steichen reported that; "The fact is, the
leadership of the feminist religious movement has not been interested in the
priesthood, as we understand that term, for a long time. They're not going
to take a vow of obedience to a bishop and they certainly wouldn't practice
it if they did. They want a new church, a church without ordained priests,
where the community can choose its own ritual leaders."
Schussler-Fiorenza pointed out that to accept women ordination would only
perpetuate a system which is unjust. Rather, they should concentrate on
transforming the priesthood into "a non-sacramental office of
community-ordained facilitators." So, though we 'hear' groups like
FutureChurch and Call To Action advocate women priests, which draws many with
it's appearance of fairness, the facts are that they really don't want it.
And if they were ever given female ordination, it would be a win-win
situation.
"To ordain women is to give this rotten totalitarian system that the Roman
Catholic Church has become the push in the grave," ( Shelia Briggs, a former
assistant professor of women's studies and now professor of religious and
social ethics at the University of Southern California.)
Remember that passage from 2 Timothy 3: 2-5? "For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman,
implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
holding the form of religion but denying the power of it."
What they can't see, or refuse to see, is how the Church has always upheld
the dignity of women. Not that all Catholics did, but the Church did.
Of course, if you disagree with them, you are the one who is myopic
(tunnel vision), closed minded, ignorant, etc. You will be the one belittled
and ridiculed. THEY have the truth and the Church doesn't.
The other tact is for the theologian to explain man to God. Here is one
of the biggest problems we face today. Sexual sins are not a sin
because…..it's healthy, it's natural, it's FUN!!! (Yes, someone actually
said that to me) For many, the true test of truth is whether or not it suits
them.
"Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of
making truth the test. It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look
well, according to a real test. It is pride to think that a thing looks ill.
because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.{The Common
Man, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1950, p. 254}
They speak of their conscience being their guide, that they do as they
please with a good conscience. But more often than not, if one listens to
them, they've killed their conscience and replaced it with one more suitable
to them. We hear "I was tired of the Church making me feel guilty…I have
nothing to feel guilty about…ergo." Well firstly, the Church didn't make you
feel guilty, the person did, because their conscience told them it was wrong.
The Church offers reconciliation, a relief from guilt. But because they
refuse this, they have to kill their conscience, rather than listening to it.
"By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their
faith, among them Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan
that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Timothy 1:19-20).
Or as St. Kolbe pointed out, those who are troubled by the guilt of their
sins may not turn to the Church for relief, but turn against the Church. The
Columbine High School tragedy is an example of this. Two boys who felt
alienated take their anger out by attacking those they feel made them
outsiders. The thing is, it wasn't the other kids or the school that made
them outsiders, they did that to themselves.
Now, it's logical then that many would be drawn to those who dissent. Either
they like what they're being told, or they don't want to seem ignorant, so
they jump on the bandwagon. It's easier to be a follower, it's nicer to have
people think highly of you. So it's preferable to stand far off and see the
wonderful vision, than investigate it closely. But if you invite them to
take a closer look, and see that it's just a dog and pony show, they'll
likely refuse and chastise you for daring call it that.
They'll boast of their enlightenment, their tolerance, and understanding,
then be intolerant of you.
"The mind of modern man is a curious mixture of decayed Calvinism and
diluted Buddhism; and he expresses his philosophy without knowing that he
holds it. We [i.e., Catholics] say what it is natural for us to say; but we
know what we are saying; therefore it is assumed that we are saying it for
effect. He says what it is natural for him to say; but he does not know what
he is saying, still less why he is saying it . . . He is just as partisan; .
. . just as much depending on one doctrinal system as distinct from another.
But he has taken it for granted so often that he has forgotten what it is. So
his literature does not seem to him partisan, even when it is. But our
literature does seem to him propagandist, even when it isn't." {The Thing,
NY: Sheed & Ward, 1929, p. 120}
G. K. Chesterton said it best: "People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as
something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or
so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than
to be mad . . . The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted
the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable . . . It is easy
to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age
have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to
be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob . . . It is always simple to fall;
there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one
stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian
Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to avoid them all has
been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies
thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the
wild truth reeling but erect.
{Orthodoxy, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1908, pp. 100-101}
As Christ pointed out, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Pax Christi, Pat