Michael Matt gets it – with little leadership, when the persecution rises, faithful Catholics must band together

A new video from the Remnant Underground series explores Cardinal Dolan’s deplorable answer to question posed by extreme liberal David Gregory on Meet the Press regarding how he would approach the announcement of a middling NFL draft prospect that he is “gay.”  As readers probably already know, Cardinal Dolan gave about the worst answer possible, saying he “has no problem with it” and “bravo.”  Good Lord……..are these truly our shepherds?

Matt asks if the Church has changed Her teaching on moral theology.  I don’t particularly like that question being asked, even rhetorically, because these “teachings” – these beliefs, these Dogmas – are so surely founded in Scripture and Tradition that they are irreformable.  If Dogmas on the evil of homosexual acts and the whole lifestyle associated with it can be changed, then the Church would stand for nothing.  Matt later makes this plain, but some folks may not watch the entire thing.

Matt rightly notes that so many of our prelates today, going even to the highest levels of the Church, seem embarrassed by what the Church believes. They seem to seek out politically-minded formulations that will allow them to escape secular criticism, rather than boldly proclaiming what the Church has always believed and believes now.

They very apparently fear men more than God.  I believe our Blessed Lord had some words for those who fear men more than God.

But Matt later goes on to ask, should someone shove a microphone in our mouth, and demand of us that we speak on the topic of how the Church should approach those lost in grave, but currently culturally popular, evils, how would we respond?  How do we respond in our daily lives when confronted with these situations in our home lives, or at work?  Do we clam up?  Do we eventolerate perversion outwardly, while abhorring it in our heart?

The broader point is that this matter of granting cultural suzerainty to sodomites is going to be THE vehicle of the persecution (along with some allied matters, like abortion, but sodomite marriage will be the tip of the spear).

“So what we’re facing right now…..[obviously pained]……is the end of life as we knew it as Catholics living in America. This whole progressive movement to make the Catholic Church back away from Her moral teachings so that She can be more tolerant and tolerable in a secularist democracy is playing itself out to the point that the Catholic Church is beginning to come off as ridiculous to everyone.”

“This whole thing with homosexuality, especially since the legalization of “gay marriage,” has become very similar to the Oath of Succession of 16th century England, the same oath that brought St. Thomas More and John Fisher to the Tower of London and eventually cost them their heads.”

I think it is utterly brilliant to compare the present heavy cultural pressure to acquiesce – especially if you purport to be faithful – to the glorification of sodomy as normal and equivalent in every way to healthy relations between a married man and woman to the situation in England when Henry VIII wanted to terminate a perfectly valid marriage in order to satisfy his grotesque lust.  In truth, our bishops have no defense against this advance of sodomy, since they have been willfully dismissing what for 1950 years would have been considered perfectly valid marriages as invalid for decades.  And we expect them to stand up to the onslaught of cultural sodomy?  Do they have the faith for that?

The closing bit, from roughly 11:00 on, regarding internecine strife between traditional/conservative/faithful Catholics – I think that is utterly key.  That is a prime reason I have avoided such conflicts like the plague to the best of my ability, and why I hated the whole Fisher-More imbroglio.  I’ve been working on a post to explore some of these same ideas.  We – I – need to stop trying to one-up each other in our awesome holiness.

I asked the other day how we, the faithful, should respond to the obvious crisis of faith in the Church’s leadership.  I then asked a bunch of questions, but missed the obvious ones.  The obvious questions should be – how am I, Laurence Tiberius Roachenhoffenstauffensteinberggreensteinhausen-Jones (now you know why I blog anonymously!), going  to cooperate with Grace and practice virtue better?  What sacrifices will I offer for the sanctification, or even conversion, of so many of our bishops?  What extra prayers will I say?  Or what prayers will I say much better?  Etc., etc, you get the point.

Yes, we may have to make some public response at some point, but the key, the basis for anything we do publicly must be our taking care of our own sanctification first. Without a large well of virtue and sanctity to draw from, any efforts to restore the Faith are likely to be not only fruitless, but even destructive.

And let us focus on aiding and sheltering each other from the coming storm.  We will need as many friends as we can get when it really breaks.