In this Year of Priests, the Holy Father has offered a Plenary Indulgence, under usual conditions, to those who, while in church, commit all priests to the protection of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I’m not talking about some science fiction story here.

Most adults have probably had some “brush with death” in their life by the time they reach their 30s, whether it’s a diagnosis–or possible diagnosis–of a life threatening illness, an accident, or whatever.  Even just contemplating the death of someone we know puts us in touch with our own mortality.

There are several approaches to the idea of impending death:

• “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” — or anything to that effect
• Making sure your loved ones know you care
• Getting very spiritual very fast
• Despair
• Working hard to get something accomplished.

What few people have to deal with is the constant awareness that, not only are they mortal, but there’s a relatively high probability they could die today.  And don’t tell me, “You could be hit by a bus.”  I get sick of hearing that response (or words to that effect).

If a person says, “Oh, no!  What if I get hit by a bus?” all the tiem, that’s generally considered being paranoid and/or phobic.

It is not paranoid and/or phobic for a Marfan, especially a post-operative Marfan with a St. Jude valve, a daily dose of Warfarin (aka Rat Poison), a brain aneurysm, and a thoracic aortic aneurysm to think, “What if I die today?”  Especially when one hears of middle-aged Marfans whose aortas dissect simply from the strain of coughing.

Today, I learned of a 16 year old girl who died of Marfan syndrome on October 9.  Her name was Madison Beaudroux.  She told her sister, “I feel like I’m going to pass out.”  She did, and those were her last words.

Every day, there’s some point where I feel like I’m going to pass out, and I often think at those moments, “What if I’m dying?”

Sometimes, I just get in so much pain that I don’t quite “pass out” or fall asleep, but I just kind of hunch over and close my eyes and stay perfectly still.  I think, “What if I die like this?” or, more precisely, “If I had just died, would anyone have noticed?”

Every day, I consider each of those above options to some degree or another.  Usually one or another predominates the others, depending upon my mood, circumstances, etc. 

Every time I get up to do something mildly strenuous, I stop and think, “What if this is the strain that pushes me over the edge?  Will this be worth it?”

What of my duties to this family God has given me?  Is it better to push myself to the limits for them and die or to hold back and be there for them?   Would I not be of more use to them as a saint in Heaven than as a cripple here on earth?
What of my duties to this body God has given me?  Is it merely a mere “coil” to be “shuffled off”?  Is it essentially a burden to be relieved from or a treasure to be protected? How to walk that line?

What of the sins I commit in thought and deed and ommission because of the strain my constant pain and fatigue put on my conscience?  Are the pain and fatigue merely the devil pressuring me to sin?  Will God show me mercy if I can’t get to Confession in time to once again confess the same bad habits and mindsets I fall back into over and over?  What if I’m not detached enough?  What if I’m just excusing myself? 

Have mercy on us, and on the whole world.

Evolution, we’re told, is dogma.  Strangely, when every other area of modern science admits to being subject to revision, evolution is held dogmatically.  It can’t be disproven.  The evidentiary holes and logical leaps used by evolutionists are to be ignored and unchallenged.

Yet, every so often, as today, there’s a report that rattles the bones of evolutionists and shakes up their “conventional wisdom” like a student playing with a laboratory skeleton. . . . .

“Lucy” is not the common ancestor of chimps and humans. They’ve found a 4.4 million year old skeleton that has human-like features that apes do not have.  They emphasize that “apes evolved differently,” of course. 

But, the real point is that every direct human ancestor they can find points to the idea that humans at least separated from other primates a *long* time ago. 

Here’s a legitimate question: how do they know these things had hair?

Egyptian archaeologists have found ancient coins bearing the inscriptions of Pharoahs and other important figures . Among the coins are coins bearing the image of a man identified as “Joseph,” the Pharoah’s treasurer.

Justin Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Kevin Rhoades have offered support for Christopher West in the debate over his work. They contend that West is doing work that needs to be done, even if his approach may be controversial to some, and commend West for his openness to criticism and revision.

Ever since Michael Jackson died, and especially since Ted Kennedy died, I’ve been thinking of a feature story Fr. George Rutler had in the November 1997 Crisis: “Speaking Well of the Dead.”   Well, Catholicity.com has reprinted it, and here it is!

On July 29, 1997, a representative philosophe of our abortion culture, retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, was lavishly eulogized in St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the Requiem Mass for President Kennedy had been sung in 1963. Richard Cardinal Cushing was relatively constrained back then, because liturgical depredations had not yet switched into high gear. It was not thus when President Clinton, who vetoed the ban on partial-birth abortions, was permitted to announce to all corners of the cathedral for consumption in all corners of the world: “Brennan’s America is America at its best.” That is, internecine America is at its best with 39 million fewer children than would have been born were it not for Brennan’s eisegesis of the Constitution. Attorney General Janet Reno later said in a speech to the American Bar Association that the honors paid to Brennan in St. Matthew’s Cathedral inspired her to go on.

. . .

Once in a press conference in which he distanced himself from the angels on significant points of behavior, Senator Edward Kennedy said that St. Thomas More had been “intolerant.” The saint indeed had been intolerant, but of falseness. The logician in him would have found grotesque the Orwellian doublethink of the priest-eulogist who said that one way to honor Brennan’s memory would be to help “a young pregnant girl.” The jurist in him would have raised an eyebrow when the priest declared: “The Brennan mind met the Brennan heart, and in their perfect match was the secret greatness of our friend.” A meeting of mind and heart is anatomically difficult when there is a spine; and when More insisted on this point, his King obliged with an ax. In the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade, Brennan concurring, mind and heart congealed to produce the words: “If the human race is to survive, pregnancy will always be with us.” The twentieth century has taught that such banality can be the diction of cruelty incarnadine.

Senator Kennedy often seems innocent of historical information, as he was in an interview with an Italian reporter in 1982 when he placed the Battle of Lepanto in the Second World War. This has made him a much sought-after eulogist. Except for his recidivistic neglect of verbs, the rhetorical senator can excel Bossuet on the death of the Prince de Condé. At a requiem for Mr. Stephen Smith, he pictured his father and brothers playing golf on a cloud with his spontaneously beatified brother-in-law. The press quoted this recreational account of the Beatific Vision with murmurs of approval.

It is not that Senator Kennedy should have said anything tactless over the corpse, or that he should have mentioned some more vigorous sport instead; he simply should not have been saying anything at all from the pulpit. [emphasis added]

That bit about the mind and heart is one of my all-time favorite quotations.

Read the rest.  It is both hilarious and insightful, and just as true about the Celebrity Canonizations of 2009 as of the ones in 1997.

Many of the colonists who came to America from the British Isles came religious groups seeking a place where they could be free to practice their religions.  There were already pockets of Dutch, German, Spanish, and French colonists.  Even the differences between English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers.  .. . Everyone settled in small communities based upon religion or ethnicity, and the they lived together in those close-knit communities, either in small villages and farms or in city ghettoes. 
This led to the “Jeffersonian ideal,” the homogeneous community.  Ironically, Jefferson himself expressed the hope that freedom of religion would lead to all Americans becoming Unitarians.  However, he still promoted the idea that the United States of America should be a perfectly subsidiarist system.

An extremely limited federal government was only supposed to regulate interstate and international matters–nothing more.

States may have had a little more power than the federal government, but most matters were to be handled at the local level.

This is where “town halls,” of course, came from: the literal town hall meeting of people in a local community.  And “parties” were just that: you got together for a barbecue with a bunch of like-minded people and decided which of your like-minded people you were going to put in office. 

People say today that the electoral college is “obsolete.”  It really isn’t.  It’s still the same thing.  The average person is never going to get to know any presidential candidate beyond a possible handshake.  But the average person *can* find out who his or her local elector is, and then get to know that person. 

Anyway, the idea behind our representative system was not just that representatives at state and federal levels would represent geographic regions but that those geographic regoins would, in turn, have common belief systems.  The presumption was that villages and towns would largely be populated by like-minded people, so the representative elected to serve a locality would reflect the beliefs of his or her locality; collectively, the state legislatures were presumed to represent the overall culture and beliefs of their states, which is why they elected senators.

All of this has been largely abandoned as our nation has grown.  Somewhere along the line, homoegeneous communities were replaced with melting pots as the American “ideal.”

This progressed to everyone learning to “get along.”

Ironically, today, the Internet has provided a new form of the “Jeffersonian ideal.” 

Our society has not become a melting pot so much as a soup.  We’re not all melted together into indistinguishable mush, though many of us are.  Instead, we’re a mixture of distinct beliefs and ideas. 

The problem is the mixture doesn’t always make a very tasty soup.  We’re not just a mixture of metaphorical carrots and potatoes and celery, but we’re like minestrone, chicken noodle soup, cream of mushroom, chili and clam chowder all dumped into the same pot.

So the lonely little pea in our culture spends most of his day floating in the gruel, trying to find someone he can relate to. 

That’s where the internet comes in.  Today’s homoegeneous communities are not to be found geographically but virtually, on blogs, and message boards, listservs and Facebook networks.

Whether it’s a commonality of religion, or politics, or morality, or gardening, or toy collecting or soap operas, people seek out those they share things in common with.

And these groups are sharing information amongst each other and unifying as voices for change.   Like minded people can share controversial news and take on whatever power structure it is–corporations, Hollywood, churches or governments–in a way that has been unprecedented, except perhaps for the earliest days of America.  That is why the “culture of the Internet,” so often derided, is very similar, whether one is speaking of fandoms, religious groups, consumer groups, hobbyists or political groups.

And that’s why it is so threatening to those in power.

The sociologists and other “experts” tell us how “dangerous” it is that people are connecting online, sharing ideas with likeminded people rather than mixing–kind of like what they say about homeschooling versus public schooling.

Is the situation dangerous for the individuals engaging in it?  Or is it dangerous for those in power, and the “melting pot” ideal that keeps them in power?

Ironically, the Internet is providing more than just a means for people to connect virtually and ideologically.  People meet online, whether through matchmaking services or just through regular social networks and discussion groups, based upon shared beliefs, and then get married, raising families based upon those values.

People organize get togethers, and eventually conventions, based upon their online relationships, adding greater cohesion to these new forming groups.  Indeed, realizing the limitations of online communication only, people do their best to use it as a tool to meet like minded people “in person” whenever possible.

*This* is what is so threatening to those in power. 

You can go online now and find a Latin Mass, or a Byzantine Liturgy, or, if it suits you, a clown mass with a gay priest.  Before the Internet, such selectivity was nigh-impossible. 

You can go online and find an NFP only pro-life physician.  You can find a homeschooling group.  You can find a house.  A job. 

A few years ago, I read about a fellow who found a small town with a low cost of living and  a fantastic Catholic parish.  He invited like-minded friends and relatives to come check it out, helped them find jobs and houses, and basically colonized the town with like-minded Catholics.

The Internet makes this possible. 

The very thing that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates thought would perfect the progressive ideal will end up sabotaging it, however gradually.

Most recently, it seems to be facilitating the progressives, as embodied by the Obama election.  But progressives have no core values to maintain their ideology.  Progressivism is a self-defeating ideology because it leads to anarchism.

I’ve long felt that those who voted out the Republicans in 2006 and those who voted in Obama last year were not so much voting *for* anything as *against.*  Obama campaigned on “change”.  Eventually, if you just keep “changing” for its own sake, you’re gonna end up with nothing left to change to except chaos.

Meanwhile, as Deacon Paul Weyrich predicted 10 years ago in his open letter declaring that we’d lost the Culture Wars, traditionalists are gathering in small enclaves, hunting down towns and parishes that are sympathetic, connecting online, homeschooling, etc.

Fr. Tom Bartolomeo had the nerve to preach against artificial contraception, a topic which, before Vatican II, priests were required to preach on at least once per year, and he was removed from his parish for it.

Bishop Joseph Martino resigns shortly after Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe says some bishops are too outspoken on “abortion and the other stuff.”

The USCCB’s “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” document, supposedly a summary of Catholic social teaching, never even mentions “birth control” or “contraception,” even though Mater et Magistra says that

189.  Besides, the resources which God in His goodness and wisdom has implanted in Nature are well-nigh inexhaustible, and He has at the same time given man the intelligence to discover ways and means of exploiting these resources for his own advantage and his own livelihood. Hence, the real solution of the problem is not to be found in expedients which offend against the divinely established moral order and which attack human life at its very source, but in a renewed scientific and technical effort on man’s part to deepen and extend his dominion over Nature. The progress of science and technology that has already been achieved opens up almost limitless horizons in this held.
…
194. Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God. Those who violate His laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members.
…
199. A provident God grants sufficient means to the human race to find a dignified solution to the problems attendant upon the transmission of human life. But these problems can become difficult of solution, or even insoluble, if man, led astray in mind and perverted in will, turns to such means as are opposed to right reason, and seeks ends that are contrary to his social nature and the intentions of Providence. 

Liberals continue to insist that Archbishop Charles Chaput (who supports the Neocatechumenate Way, Charismatic Renewal, and other heterodox lay movements) is a “far right conservative” just because he’s outspoken on abortion.

We hear from Cardinals Rigali, O’Malley and others say they will not support a health care bill that pays for abortions, which implies that they will support a health care bill that pays for contraceptives.

When was the last time the USCCB issued an official statement

We’re told of people like Fr. Bartolomeo and Fr. Christopher Buckner and Bishop Martino that it is their “pastoral style,” not their “orthodoxy,” that gets them in trouble.  Yet many saints have had a similar “pastoral style.”

We’re told that the “pastoral styles” of O’Malley and Chaput and Dolan are more effective.

Effective at doing what? 
Not actually teaching what the Church does?

Shouldn’t a pastor be making sure his sheep get through the gate?

One poll says 61% of Catholics think contraception should be up to laity and 75% say it’s possible to be a good Catholic and disobey the Natural Law on this matter. 

A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Study found that 97% of Catholic women over 18 have used some form of artificial birth control in their lives, and a 2005 Harris Poll found that 90% of Catholics supported birth control.

These polls indicate the range of numbers I’ve heard on how many Catholics in the US support and/or use artificial birth control.

Attention, USCCB: the majority of your flock are headed straight to Hell, and you aren’t saying anything about it!!!

How are they supposed to repent if you don’t tell them to????

Instead, the few voices who actually speak on it are called “right wing extremists” or “judgemental” just for being willing to say what the Church teaches.

Has the USCCB ever issued a statement condemning birth control?

Has the USCCB ever issued a statement condemning the “overpopulation” movement or NSSM-200?

Until that happens, I’ll take Judie Brown or Fr. Tom Euteneuer over the fraudulent “shepherds” at the USCCB.

Michael  Jackson admitted to literally sleeping with boys in his bed.  Let’s take that action alone.

I’ve read numerous cases against priests where the primary accusation was sharing a bed.  There are lots of accusations made against priests for “merely sleeping” without any alleged sexual contact (of course, the convicted pedophiles on the VIRTUS video explain in great detail how they were able to get pleasured by children without the children even realizing what was gonig on).

So, again, as I noted at the time of the Michael Jackson sobfest, a Catholic priest who is merely *accused* of doing as much as Michael Jackson *admitted*, without ever being convicted, has his life destroyed.  But everyone is supposed to admire this man who was little more than a porn star because of how much he impacted our culture (hardly for the better, morally or culturally) and how much money he allegedly gave to charity.

OK.

Now, we have this case of another instrument of the Culture of Death, from the other direction, whose passing has opened up debates about how well the Church speaks its voice against the grave moral evils of our world, how well the Church speaks out against politicians who support those evils, and about how the dead are honored in general.  Many have suggested that the questions of eulogies, non-Catholics receiving Communion at funerals, etc. are so commonplace as to be unimportant.

I didn’t realize that there was a certain number of times a sin could be committed and then it ceased to be a sin!

These two stories converge in my mind in the case of a presumably holy priest who is suffering in canonical limbo, due to an unproven allegation.  If what most people assume is correct, that allegation stems from trying to safeguard authentic liturgy even at the expense of grieving family members.

The priest is Fr. Christopher Buckner of the Diocese of Arlington.   I mostly know Fr. Buckner by reputation.  I only met him once, in passing, attended a couple of his masses, and I think I confessed to him once.    He struck me as a very sincere, devout and holy priest.  In his farewell homily to the parishioners of St. Mary’s in Fredericksburg (the only homily I know for certain I heard), he gave a sincere apology for how his notorious temper had hurt some people.

Now, Fr. Buckner was the kind of priest one either loved or hated, and it depended upon where one stood in the culture wars.  If one stood on the Left side of the fence, or one sat on the “I’d rather not get involved” middle, Fr. Buckner was hated: hated by the Left for denouncing them; hated by the Middle for disturbing their “can’t we all just get along” mentality.

Interestingly, for a priest who was often accused of “driving people away,” Fr. Buckner managed to get a huge number of converts for RCIA classes every year–in part by simply advertising in the newspaper.  He was friends with many non-Catholics around Fredericksburg, perhaps friendlier with non-Catholics than members of his own parish.

He told my wife’s rabidly Democratic aunt that her Clinton/Gore bumper stickers were not welcome at his parish. 

One of my wife’s  best friends served altar with Fr. Buckner at a parish in Northern Virginia and always thought highly of him.  Indeed, having known Fr. Buckner mainly for his gruff reputation, Mary got another side one night, when she and a group of college friends were driving back to Williamsburg via Fredericksburg.  The aforementioned friend wanted to stop by St. Mary’s and see Fr. Buckner.  The prospect of knocking on the rectory door that late in the evening, particularly to the “infamous” Fr. Buckner, was daunting to Mary, but she was greeted by a whole other side of this priest.  He greeted them all warmly, served them snacks, and they had a great time.

After he left St. Mary’s, Fr. Buckner served as a professor at Catholic Distance University, and served as an assistant at a parish where another one of our friends attended.  She also thought highly of Fr. Buckner.

Fr. Buckner was also known for his youth pilgrimages to the Holy Land. 

We knew there were rumors–if nothing else that he was a bit too “touchy feely,” but they never seemed credible.  Having taken VIRTUS training, it is easy to see how Fr. Buckner *could* fit a certain MO (e.g., giving the appearance of virtue to most people, singling out the one victim, and the victim is not believed because of it).

Well, in May 2007, Arlington was rocked with Bishop Paul Loverde–who has a long history of silencing or otherwise disciplining outspokenly orthodox priests–announced the suspension of Fr. Buckner.

This carried with it a couple implications.  First, we *had* heard the rumor that his transfer in 2000 was due to allegations made by some former altar boys, so, on the surface, this seemed to prove those allegations.  However, Loverde had said, in reference to the Fr. Haley/Fr. Hamilton  situation in 2002, that Arlington had *always* had a zero tolerance policy with abuse accusations.  If the rumors we’d heard in 2000 were true, then that proves Loverde lied in his statements denouncing Fr. Haley (of course, Loverde did lie about Fr. Haley in other ways, too). 

In any case, all the diocese of Arlington ever officially said was that Fr. Buckner had been accused of “inappropriate conduct with a minor.” 

The date given was between 1992 and 1994.  Now, one of the reasons Fr. Buckner’s temper was so notorious, and why this relates to the recent debacle in Boston, is that there was, shortly after he arrived at St. Mary’s, a controversy regarding a funeral.

The family wanted a song sung at the funeral, and Fr. Buckner didn’t want secular music.  So the family defied him, and the decedent’s son sang the song anyway, and, after the Mass, Fr. Buckner allegedly cussed the kid out.

Now, I’ve been on both sides of this issue over the years, as my own view of liturgy has evolved.  So, I’m inclined to see both sides on this, if not lean towards the family.  But does speak volumes to the mentality that we should let anything go at a Catholic funeral, from crazy music selections to eulogies (which are explicitly forbidden by canon law) to sacrilegious communions just out of compassion for the grieving families.

OK, so, back to  the accusation.   When the accusation came out, most people who knew anything at all about Fr. Buckner and the parish, etc., figured it was probably from that incident.

The Diocese kept the accusation vaguee.  To date, more than 2 years later ,there have not been any charges filed against Fr. Buckner.  There has been no civil trial.  No criminal trial.  No canonical trial.  There hasn’t been any word about where Fr. Buckner is.  He’s just in canonical limbo, suspended as a priest, without any due process.

My mother in law told us that, shortly after the suspension, they brough this whole investigative crew to St. Mary’s.  They were told the people would be there for 4 weeks investigating the case against Fr. Buckner.  It was a regular witch hunt, and they summoned people in trying to dig up dirt.

And they couldn’t find any.

They left in less than two weeks because no one was able to corroborate anything, and no one was willing to denounce Fr. Buckner.

There was no evidence.

So, there you have it, folks.

1.  Rich celebrity accused of various accusations by teenaged boys.  Gets off scott free.  Admits to sleeping with them.  People excuse him and say what a great “artist” he was.

2.  Rich politician flaunts his defiance against God his whole life.  May or may not have repented on his deathbed (which is really irrelevant).  Certainly never publicly renounced his public heresies and public scandals.  Got a big to-do of a funeral, replete with numerous liturgical abuses, including a non-Catholic pro-abortion president delivering a eulogy. 

3.  Mostly holy priest with a bad temper, who tries to do what’s right and teach others to practice heroic virtue, lets his temper get the better of him in regard to a possible liturgical abuse at a funeral.  Has an unproven allegation made against him–perhaps stemming from that incident or perhaps unrelated–and even though he has brought numerous converts to the Catholic faith, even though he has, in giving people the sacraments, done infinitely more good than every entertainer and politician put together, this priest languages in a state of canonical suspension, with barely a mention in the media.

The salvation of a single soul through sacramental grace is worth more than all the money in the world, especially since money is worth nothing.

If even our bishops and the Vatican newspaper say that the alleged good works of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy warrant them our respect and admiration, then shouldn’t the good works of Fr. Christopher Buckner and Fr. James Haley warrant even more respect and admiration?

Shouldn’t these two holy priests–one suspended for an unproven allegation, the other suspended for making proven allegations–get the same kind of “pass” as Ted Kennedy?

Is not a single Host of infinite worth and importance?  Is not a single Mass of infinite worth and importance?

Today’s Gospel reading is the story of how the Pharisees condemned Jesus and His disciples for not washing their hands . This is a  common motif in the Gospels, which people conveniently ignore in their attempts at being as worldly as possible.  Martha condemns Mary for for making a nice dinner setting.  The Pharisees condemn the Apostles for not washing their hands.

Civility is often the enemy of the spiritual life, more than its friend.  Certainly, there are parallels between good manners and good morals.  Certainly,  human respect can aid virtue if it is one more thing to shame us out of commiting at least certain kinds of sin.

But, more often than not, civility is just what the Devil uses to cover up his tracks.

Somewhere, my kids picked up the idea, when playing, that there are “evil people” and there are “nice people.”  I’m constantly trying to point out, when I hear them say that, that evil people often appear nice, and goodness often is not “nice.”

“Nice” people don’t  like what’s unpleasant.  That may be the exposure of the festering wounds of sin, or that may be the exposure of the festering wounds of the body.  They don’t like being around those who are odd-looking, or different, or challenging. 

Flannery O’Connor’s stories are all about how the civility and manners of “nice, decent” people both disguise their sins and impede them from pursuing heroic virtue.  She forces them into dramatic situations where they are forced to face the unpleasant head-on, and then they have to deal with that somehow.  In doing that, she forces her readers to face the same situation, and her “nice, decent” readers often balk at the unpleasantness of her stories.

Yet O’Connor forces us to look right at the unpleasnat in the eye, and then points us to the Desert Fathers, who understood the truth of Matthew 11:12. 

One of her favorite passages, quoted prominently in one of her later stories, was the following letter of St. Jerome:

Pampered soldier, why are you wasting time in your father’s house? Where is the rampart, the ditch, the winter campaign under canvas? Behold the trumpet sounds from heaven! Our General, fully armed, comes amid the clouds to overcome the world. From our King’s mouth comes the double-edged sword that cuts down all in its path. Are you going to remain in your chamber and not come out to join in the battle? . . . Listen to your King’s proclamation: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.”
…

0 desert, green with the flowers of Christ! 0 solitude in which the stones of the Great City of the King mentioned in the Apocalypse are found! 0 wilderness rejoicing in the presence of God! Brother, what are you doing in the world when you are so much more important than the world? How long are the shadows of a roof going to hold you back? How long will the smoky dungeon of these cities imprison you? . . . How refreshing to fling off the burdens of the flesh and fly to the sparkling aether? . . . You are spoiled indeed, dear friend, if you wish to rejoice here on earth–and afterwards reign with Christ!

To whom did St. Jerome direct these harsh, judgemental words?  To a pro-abortion politician?  To a  bishop who gave solace to such a politician?  No.  He gave them to a fellow hermit who accepted a position as a bishop in the city. 

The saints understood that the way of salvation is harsh and difficult.  They understand that, as St. Teresa of Avila puts it, this life is like a night in a bad hotel room, and the most pleasant things the world offers are nothing compared to the next life.

But even those who have “made themselves eunuchs” for the Gospel still cling to human respect.  They wine and dine with those who do the work of the enemy.  They say, “Well, Jesus dined with tax collectors and sinners.”
Yes, He dined with tax collectors and sinners who repented, though He often dined with Pharissees as well, in order to debate with them. 

When bishops, pundits and politicians talk of their “friendships” with pro-abortion politicians and celebrities, and cite Jesus dining with sinners to endorse those friendships, have they put those friendships above their responsibility to Truth?  Have they really tried to change the minds of those pro-abortion and pro-contraception people? 

When a Catholic politician dumps his wife for a younger model and wants an annulment, does any prelate dare stand against him the way the Holy Father stood against Henry VIII?  Or do they just give a rubber-stamp annulment–the way they do for other laity these days–for some reason not much better than “irreconcilable differences,” totally degrading the importance of marriage? 

Do they make any efforts at getting those politicians to reconcile with their wives?  Heck, to they make any efforts at saving Catholic marriages these days?

Or do they do the “civil” thing and avoid controversy, especially when the controversy could cost them thousands of dollars in donations?

Civility says there are things you don’t talk about in polite company.  Instead ,those most important of  subjects, get conveniently avoided, and those who *would* talk about them, those who *would* try to challenge the behavior of others are challenged for violating the rules of “civility.”

“This man’s spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments”

–GK Chesterton