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| "The Denial of Peter" Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1873 |
My name is Kevin, and I have been a Roman Catholic for 35 years since my birth. I was born to a mother and father who handed down the Faith to me and even sent me to Catholic school when I was a child. I have questioned and even for a time doubted the Faith I have inherited. I have recovered from my doubts, discerned the Priesthood for a time, and in God's time have found myself happily married with a beautiful daughter who will be two-years-old in the next year. I am also a lay member of a Society of Apostolic Life recognized by the Holy See as well as a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus. I mention my background not to flaunt my Catholic experience and continued service to Holy Mother Church, but to offer an accurate perspective of who I am.
I write all of you out of a sincere spirit of respect for your offices and full recognition of Pope Francis as Vicar of Christ and Sovereign Pontiff of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I write as one who is devoted to the Catholic religion and practices his Faith and rightly wishes that his children be raised to practice the same Faith that was given to their earthly father. However, I write with grave concern and much urgency.
Your Holiness, Eminences, and Excellencies, it does not take much effort to realize that the Catholic Church is in crisis. No doubt in your Sees you have seen crisis manifest in different ways. However, it needs to be said for clarity that the Church is in crisis. The Bride of Christ is weeping. The Bride of Christ hemorrhaging from a wound inflicted by an assailant. The Bride of Christ has been afflicted by a malaise which has weakened her immune system, and so is vulnerable to the spread of disease.
Every day. Every headline. Every piece of "click bait." Every personal take on social media. Every celebrity "theologian" and "academic." Everywhere you go, no matter if it is at the newspapers, social media, or nightly news it is there, and it is presenting itself as a bully waiting for you after class behind the corner. There is no escaping it. Every day it is another scandal, another Priest or Bishop, another victim, another tale of oversight, another exposure of a Seminary program turned frat house in the 1970s. Another hit piece from a Jesuit publication slamming, ostracizing devoted Catholics for requesting their local Pastor to use the Latin text of the Agnus Dei at Mass, or using Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum to request from their Pastor or local Ordinary that use of the 1962 Missale Romanum (otherwise known as the Latin Mass, Usus Antiquior, Traditional Latin Mass, or Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite).
The mess, the malaise, the swamp. I am confident that you are aware, for all of this is going on under your watchful, pastoral gazes. I am confident that you are also becoming exhausted if not are growing weary of the tremendous Cross that seems to have come upon the shoulders of the Church. It is a great Cross indeed. At times this is cause for anxiety and fear.
Your Holiness, Eminences, and Excellencies, I pray every day as a son of the Church that you do not let the anxiety of the present crisis afflicting the Church weigh you down into apathy. Rather, I hope that you are running into the arms of our Blessed Mother Mary, and throwing yourselves upon the Sacred Heart of our blessed Lord. I hope too that my prayers and the prayers of the many Catholics praying for all of you are also an encouragement and comfort in this time.
As I may hope I am yet disappointed. You see, I find myself in agreement of a particular point of view. That point of view is that we the lay faithful who depend upon our Shepherds to lead us to Jesus Christ have been given over to lies, cover ups, and the type of childish gimmicks and antics one might expect from a children's television show. Because many other more eloquent bloggers have shared specific examples I will refrain from adding to the litany ad nauseum. But you also know what I am speaking of. Or at very least you should.
So let us set aside the hyperbole and superfluous and allow me to answer what may be a question among you: So, what do we expect the Bishops to do?
Simple. Be our Shepherds. Be a man after God's own Heart! Love us lay faithful enough to sacrifice your own personal ambitions and take on the ambitions of the Sacred Heart--that is daily remind yourselves of salus animarum suprema lex. As I, a husband, was taught on my wedding day by the words of St. Paul, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it." If I am so charged with loving my wife to the point of giving up my life for her, how much more are the Pope, Bishops, and Priests called to do the same for the Church Christ founded and gave to their care?
The salvation of our souls is the primary work that you are called to do as our Shepherds appointed by Christ. This work is accomplished by offering the Sacrifice (not a communal meal) of the Mass. We, the lay faithful, need the Sacrifice of Christ in the Mass offered for our souls and in propitiation for our sins. We also need to be reminded daily of that Sacrifice. We need our confessions heard and then to be given penance for our sins, and not because we scrupulously are recklessly aiming for spiritual ruin, but because we have offended God, and we need to be told that without all the sugarcoating. St. Paul even says that "all have fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) So how is it that we have turned the Sacrifice of the Mass in many areas into a festival celebrating banal human achievements that cannot measure to the Mercy and Justice of Almighty God? How is it that depending on the personal style of the Pastor some of the lay faithful grow well in the faith and others do not? Yes, I understand that original sin affects us all, but are not we supposed to grow in faith and not away from it?
The second work is to confirm the Faith. This coincides with the first work as being the salvation of our souls. Confirming the Faith does not mean giving us a puppet show in place of a well thought out, well prepared sermon/homily that brings the Gospel to us, but also raises our minds to contemplate Heaven and the good things that only God can give us. Only God can give us a Pope, a Church, a Priesthood, the Eucharist. We need to know this and be reminded of this weekly. We need our minds and souls inspired to "seek the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness" (Matthew 6:33) by prayer and sacrifice. How can we do this when Father processes into Mass dressed as a clown and tells us to avoid being like those "rigid" Catholics with their Latin hymns? I must insist with honesty that once I discovered the heritage of my Faith in the traditional Liturgy I did not become "rigid" as many have accused. On the contrary I found a treasure, the pearl of great prize, and a "stone rejected by the builders" that quickly became a formative part of my Faith. It is because of the rich traditions of the Church that I have come to truly love the Church and defend her against attacks from without and unfortunately within.
Your Holiness, Eminences, and Excellencies I will refrain from further asking you to restore the traditional liturgy according to the 1962 Missale Romanum, in part because I know that not a few requests are perhaps received by you daily. However, I encourage you to make the traditional liturgy available, per Summorum Pontificum, to the lay faithful who desire in faithfulness to the Church and to the Holy Father, to use the formula of the Sacraments as passed down through the centuries by your predecessors of happy memory.
I will conclude by pleading with not only yourselves, but also your Priests serving in parishes, schools, visiting the sick and dying, and even in the missions. Enough is enough! The flock of our blessed Lord needs fed. We are starving and suffering spiritual undernourishment! The flock needs fed not with the ice cream and candy of a faith that is little different from a Hallmark greeting card or nostalgia of a teenage slumber party, but with the Faith of our Fathers. A Faith founded upon the faith of St. Peter of whom Christ said, "Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church." (Matthew 16:18) This is an unwavering Faith. It is time that we hear of the Faith that gives us our spiritual meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Dessert can wait. The faithful who have not yet deserted Christ are waiting. We are waiting like sheep for our Shepherds to wake up and defend us from the wolf prowling around us waiting to strike. Unfortunately, the wolf has been striking and has a voracious appetite. Please, dear Fathers, Bishops, Cardinals, and Holy Father step up, defend your flock, defend the faith, and feed the lambs of Christ! Otherwise, to whom shall we go?
Prayerfully in the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
A faithful Catholic concerned to see his Holy Mother Church weep
