Remain and Resist: A Catholic Man's Response to Scandal

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The Psalmist says “Put not your trust in princes”. Highly appropriate today since the cardinals of the Catholic Church are often called the Princes of the Church.

“How could someone be a part of this?” I have not been asked this question personally, though it has often surfaced in the wake of last year’s revelations of the decades-long abuse of minors and seminarians by the disgraced ex-cardinal and defrocked priest Theodore McCarrick, as well as the subsequent reports of cover-ups, grand jury investigations, and numerous other matters surrounding the satanic filth infecting the Catholic Church.

Remain and Resist: A Catholic Man's Response to Scandal

Remain and Resist

I am a practicing Roman Catholic and I will continue to be until the day I die. But why? Why would and how could I continue to be a part of what today more resembles an international crime syndicate than the Bride of Christ?

The main reason is quite simple. It is the one true church established by the Son of God Himself for the salvation of souls. The Church belongs to Jesus Christ. Not the priests, not the bishops, and no, not even the pope. They are merely the stewards of this inheritance. Our Lord had a sharp warning for unfaithful servants in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. It is therefore He, Whom I receive in Holy Communion at each Mass I attend, to Whom my heart and devotion are first and foremost directed.

From a practical standpoint, what good would my leaving do? No one in the hierarchy knows – and arguably, no one cares – who I am. What message would it send? I would grant myself an imagined sense of approval by a world that would forget who I am just as quickly and only continue to revile, reject, and despise Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church. It would all be for a vain and empty hope of appeasing prejudices seemingly confirmed by these scandals.

If I believe the truths which the Church proclaims and if I love my Catholic faith (which I do), then I am without valid reason for leaving. I therefore consider myself obligated to remain a faithful son of the Church and fight for her freedom and exaltation.

The Fresh Stench of the Modern Spirit

“If only the Church would modernize, if only they would get with the times, this wouldn’t be happening”. Spare me. The Church has been “modernizing” for the last several decades. “Throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through”, said Pope John XXIII (r. AD 1958-1962) and look where it’s gotten us: The Mass, once the supreme sacrificial offering to God, is now a largely trivialized and poorly-attended social gathering supervised by a disgraced and dwindling priesthood. Warnings of Hell and proclamations on the need for baptism, the Sacraments, and repentance have been toned down and replaced with affirmation and accompaniment.

As some would prefer to call this,
As some would prefer to call this, "progress".

The richness of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the devotional works of Saints Francis de Sales and Theresa of Avila are all but dismissed and forgotten. Conversions, vocations, marriages, baptisms, Confirmations, First Communions, literacy of the faith and obedience to Church teachings – you name it, the numbers are abysmal. The Catholic Church is now virtually indistinguishable from the average government or corporation, infected with scandal and corruption unlike anything ever seen before. People want the Church to look more like the culture? She already does. She is already largely irrelevant in the eyes of the modern world and is rapidly and increasingly so to the majority of today’s Catholics for that reason exactly.

But please, tell me more about how “modernizing” will save the Church.

“Let not thy heart be troubled”

You are free to believe what you want to about me and to respond with either indifference or vitriol; I am not interested. My intent with this is threefold. First, to glorify God and defend His Holy Church. Second, to explain the mind of a faithful Christian faced with scandal to those who are genuinely curious (I know that most readers won’t understand the things I’ve talked about).

And third, to plea to other Catholics who feel scandalized by all this: I beg you not to be so to the point of abandoning your faith. If you have left the Church because of these scandals, either by simple cease of practice or joining another community, please come home. I get it. It’s embarrassing, it’s disturbing, and it’s infuriating. But now is not the time to allow those feelings to get the better of you (John 14:1). This is the time for you to study, know, and love your faith so that you can live and defend it, and most importantly, to pass it on to your children.

We who love the Church must stand together against the evil at work within her walls, resist those who permit or even promote it, and pray for either their conversions or their ousters from positions of authority; make no mistake, they are Legion (Mark 5:9). We must pray for the full healing and restoration of the victims. Pray for and stand with those priests and bishops who are actively working to clean up their parishes and restore the beauty and glory of the Church. As of this writing, my diocese is tremendously blessed with a faithful shepherd in Archbishop Joseph Naumann, whose investigations into misconduct have been thorough and his resolutions swift and firm. My own parish is blessed with three of the most outstanding priests whom I have ever known.

Pray especially for those lonely men abandoned or persecuted by their parishioners, or worse even, their own brother priests and bishops for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ, for those priests like Fathers Paul Kalchik and Edwin Dywer, for whistleblowers like Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Pray for those in Catholic media who have to know and report on these situations.

Pray the Rosary every day!

“He who endures to the end…”

The Church has outlived every heresy, every persecution, and every scandal that has befallen her. She will outlive this one. The wicked men committing these crimes – against minors AND post-pubescents and adults – and the weak, negligent, cowardly, and heretical snot-rags who protect them may escape human justice, but they will not – they CANNOT – escape Divine Justice (Deuteronomy 32:35). One day, they will die and they will answer for what they have done. If, provided they have not offered the slightest but most sincere cry of repentance in the hour of death, these pawns of the Ancient Serpent want to burn in Hell for all Eternity and forever hand themselves over to unspeakable horrors and tortures prepared specifically for them (Read what Sts. Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Ligouri have to say), never knowing even a moment’s relief, that is their choice. I will render account for my own sins. Not theirs.

"To restore all things in Christ"

I doubt that I will be so blessed as to live to see the full restoration of the Church promised by Our Lady of Good Success. In fact, I even wonder if I’ll see how much worse it may get; I fear terribly that the worst yet awaits us, though I hope and pray that I am mistaken. Until that day comes though, the Church will suffer greatly, but I will remain and fight. I will do so by raising my children in the traditional Catholic faith and culture; that would be a much greater consternation to the current hierarchy than my leaving would be. I’ll write articles and blog posts and make videos. But above all through prayer, fasting, and penance.

"Restore all things in Christ" - The motto of Pope St. Pius X

On his way to martyrdom, Saint Polycarp was urged by his executioners, who wished to spare themselves the embarrassment of burning an elderly man alive, to reject Christ. To their pleas, he replied “Eighty and six years have I served Him and He never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” I risk losing much less in this life. How then could I myself reject Christ on account of Judas priests and bishops?

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, a world without end. Amen.

Remain and Resist: A Catholic Man's Response to Scandal

St. Peter Damian, pray for us!

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

St. Patrick, pray for us!

St. Pius X, pray for us!

St. Joseph, Guardian of the Universal Church, Terror of Demons, pray for us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Remain and Resist: A Catholic Man's Response to Scandal
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