The crest of a black tide
Anyone who thinks that the fact that the everlastingly resurrected scandal stories about the Church always peak about Eastertime is pathetically naive. The journalistic mob and their managers know what they are doing. This is their way of writing Easter sermons.
These sermons have already cost me a friend - someone who believed the propaganda implicitly and who was shocked, poor creature, to find that I would not crawl - neither in the Church's name, nor in mine - before the ever-remewed, never-satisfied demands of our masters of morality. As I told her, I would be glad to renew our friendship when she realizes who has been manipulating the mob, who has been lying and misrepresenting and leading on those who knew no better. But meanwhile, I have no intention of being treated on my own blog as though there was something left to apologize for.
Father Cantalamessa is right. This is persecution. It is an attempt to use the means of mass manipulation to destroy the cohesion of the Church, and it is directly comparable to the use of those same means to discredit the state of Israel - a process which, especially in Britain, no longer even pretends to draw any distinction between Jewish communities and Israel as such. And is it a surprise that both processes are going on at the same time? Not to anyone who has studied modern Jew-bashing. There are, of course, people who claim some sort of Catholic identity and bash Jews; such intellectual perverts and deviants are hardly representative and are constantly on the edge of schism, where indeed they are not schismatic already. But especially in modern times, the assault upon the Jews preludes to the assault upon the Churches. I have argued elsewhere that there is a subterranean solidarity between the Jewish people and the institution of the Papacy; recent events hardly contradict that. As the assault upon the Pope - and specifically upon the Pope - reaches its height of noise and smoke just before Easter, so the brutal treatment of Benyamin Netanyahu by a certain American politician happened just as the Jewish people was preparing for Passover. And chag v'kosher Pasech samech to you too.
But it is becoming increasingly clear that the more the poison is used, the less it works. A report from Ireland, whose secularists have the peculiar ferocity of certain small countries whose survival is only due to the Church - Quebec is another - is that in spite of the witches' sabbath joyously performed by all the media and almost every politician, the churches this Holy Week have been full to an unprecedented degree, to the point where the public overflowed and had no place to stand, let alone sit - this in a country not short of church buildings( http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/why-our-passion-never-dies-2123832.html ). It sounds as though even lukewarm and nominal Catholics have resolved to stand up and be counted; and it is not even Easter yet.
After all, we are barely being touched yet. The enemy has not yet tried the tactics they use in Orissa or Pakistan. The wave of hate and lies is only meant to try and make us doubt the Church and ourselves. But whether, when they find this tactic not only failing but counterproductive, they shall use the more hands-on methods of their Muslim or Hindutva colleagues, only time will tell. We already have an Oxford professor proposing that parents should be forbidden to teach "religion" (and guess what he means by religion?) to their own children. Worse may well come. But we have been here before; and the Church has a strange habit of turning up, at the end of the worst and most concerted assaults upon her, stronger and more widespread and more respected than ever.
As for me, I pray for the peace and blessing of God not only on us but on all men of good will and right understanding, Christian or not; and for light and understanding to the rest. Amen.
These sermons have already cost me a friend - someone who believed the propaganda implicitly and who was shocked, poor creature, to find that I would not crawl - neither in the Church's name, nor in mine - before the ever-remewed, never-satisfied demands of our masters of morality. As I told her, I would be glad to renew our friendship when she realizes who has been manipulating the mob, who has been lying and misrepresenting and leading on those who knew no better. But meanwhile, I have no intention of being treated on my own blog as though there was something left to apologize for.
Father Cantalamessa is right. This is persecution. It is an attempt to use the means of mass manipulation to destroy the cohesion of the Church, and it is directly comparable to the use of those same means to discredit the state of Israel - a process which, especially in Britain, no longer even pretends to draw any distinction between Jewish communities and Israel as such. And is it a surprise that both processes are going on at the same time? Not to anyone who has studied modern Jew-bashing. There are, of course, people who claim some sort of Catholic identity and bash Jews; such intellectual perverts and deviants are hardly representative and are constantly on the edge of schism, where indeed they are not schismatic already. But especially in modern times, the assault upon the Jews preludes to the assault upon the Churches. I have argued elsewhere that there is a subterranean solidarity between the Jewish people and the institution of the Papacy; recent events hardly contradict that. As the assault upon the Pope - and specifically upon the Pope - reaches its height of noise and smoke just before Easter, so the brutal treatment of Benyamin Netanyahu by a certain American politician happened just as the Jewish people was preparing for Passover. And chag v'kosher Pasech samech to you too.
But it is becoming increasingly clear that the more the poison is used, the less it works. A report from Ireland, whose secularists have the peculiar ferocity of certain small countries whose survival is only due to the Church - Quebec is another - is that in spite of the witches' sabbath joyously performed by all the media and almost every politician, the churches this Holy Week have been full to an unprecedented degree, to the point where the public overflowed and had no place to stand, let alone sit - this in a country not short of church buildings( http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/why-our-passion-never-dies-2123832.html ). It sounds as though even lukewarm and nominal Catholics have resolved to stand up and be counted; and it is not even Easter yet.
After all, we are barely being touched yet. The enemy has not yet tried the tactics they use in Orissa or Pakistan. The wave of hate and lies is only meant to try and make us doubt the Church and ourselves. But whether, when they find this tactic not only failing but counterproductive, they shall use the more hands-on methods of their Muslim or Hindutva colleagues, only time will tell. We already have an Oxford professor proposing that parents should be forbidden to teach "religion" (and guess what he means by religion?) to their own children. Worse may well come. But we have been here before; and the Church has a strange habit of turning up, at the end of the worst and most concerted assaults upon her, stronger and more widespread and more respected than ever.
As for me, I pray for the peace and blessing of God not only on us but on all men of good will and right understanding, Christian or not; and for light and understanding to the rest. Amen.