The news is increasingly negative and it is getting increasingly anti-Christian. Each day another whopper of “Can you believe this?” is injected into a conversation. Everyday it is more bizarre and the anxiety increases in our households. The signs for civil disturbance are growing as ideologies differ and people become more resolute with their views on politics, religion, and now just about everything. The fight for Brett Kavanaugh to be approved to the U.S. Supreme Court with the resignation of Justice Kennedy is intense as the left feels Roe v. Wade could be overturned. Of every issue in America, the battle is again over abortion.
The Catholic Church has paid out an estimated $4 billion in settlements due to the issue of sexual abuse. That is the official number, but many feel hush money and out of court settlements inflates that number considerably. In June of 2018, 450 survivors of sexual abuse in the Twin Cities of Minnesota were awarded $210 million.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen often spoke in his twilight years that the world went through five hundred year cycles of belief and unbelief, and the present era in which we now live was the end of Christendom as we know it. However, right now on our watch after the Church for centuries has seen unheralded prosperity and freedom of worship, there are signs for the believer that there are deep and jagged cracks in the church edifice. Increasingly, the Christian view is not tolerated, but considered a virulent stain on our culture that has brought so many of our present ills.
Catholics could soon be criminals for teaching the bible on moral issues in California. If Bill AB 2943 is passed in California, it would make it illegal to teach Christianity. The proposed Bill states, “Under no circumstances shall a mental health provider engage in sexual orientation change efforts as any patient under 18 years of age” as it would be applied under the Business and Professional Code. If it passes in California and there is every indication it will, other heavily blue states will follow.
No matter the profession, the believer in Jesus Christ is under attack and it is in the open for all to see. There is in the United States and all of western civilization an assault on Christianity, and the believer should brace for worse to come as few in the hierarchy are speaking out against the moral slide. Some clergy are actually embracing something never seen in the church, a new definition of marriage outside of the traditional one man and one woman. Traditionally, it has been the lunatic fringe desiring lavender vestments, now it is many in the mainstream hierarchy promoting this agenda at the very summit of the Church.
Historian Will Durant said in his Lessons of History, “nations don’t die from without, but commit suicide.” The destruction of the church is not happening solely from without, but some clergy formerly operating in stealth, are now in the open undermining magisterial scriptural teaching and dogma from within. This is new if one looks at how large it is. Social policies may have had disagreements in the past among people, but not to the extent of trying to alter the very words of Jesus on sacred teaching. Catholics have had a tendency to not criticize clergy, yet in times where grievous error is being taught, fraternal correction is necessary.
Recently the Canadian Supreme Court voted 7-2 that Trinity Western University Law School was denied accreditation because it lacked “diversity.” As the name implies with the word Trinity in it, students and faculty to remain in good standing are to uphold Christian teachings. Its covenant reads, “that all students and faculty pursue a holy life characterized by humility, self-sacrifice, mercy and justice, and mutual submission for the good of others.” Along with these views is the social agenda that comes with biblical values. Until just recently, a biblical value was understood in no matter which language you read the text. Increasingly, these moral doctrines are no longer tolerated. Sin is on the rampage and it is aggressive. The believer is increasingly the “outsider,” and in the future you will either be “in” or “out.”
Orthodoxy is getting more difficult to find on college campuses throughout the western world. At Jesuit run Marquette University in Wisconsin, a professor was fired for teaching marriage is between one man and one woman. It took professor John McAdams three years of litigation to get reinstated with full back pay and benefits. The court said that his academic freedom and his right to free speech had been violated. At small Catholic Rivier University in New Hampshire, the front of the university magazine shows a lesbian couple kissing with one woman in a tux and the other in a wedding dress.
These are not isolated events at nearly any Catholic college in the land. The egregious things happening are too numerous to mention, and any parent can tell you that this is now fairly normal behavior endorsed by college administrators.
SOLUTION
We as believers need to build our own communities and prayer groups with people of faith. That is why at Medjugorje and other places, our Blessed Mother has asked that everyone including youth be in prayer groups. These small “domestic churches” of faith will sustain and encourage its members to fight the good fight and endure whatever trials come our way. Our Lady has said, “In your hands the Holy Rosary and the Sacred Scripture; in your hearts the love of truth,” and as Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU