How Do You Do It?

From the Pastor:    How Do You Do It?

       Last week I wrote about some of the news I was hearing and reading. Both the secular news and that coming from the Church are disheartening. I said that I wasn’t planning on reading any more news while I was away and I meant it. Yet I still got an earful simply by having the radio on while driving, for even Relevant Radio has news breaks. To those of you who spend hours every day listening to or watching the news, I ask this very serious question: How do you do it? Doesn’t it steal your joy? Doesn’t it lead to hopelessness? Powerlessness? Constant anger and resentment? Do yourself a favor and turn it off and tune it out to the best of your ability. You don’t need to be a prophet to know at least the near future: In the Church, the Syndod on Synodality will be a fiasco, as the unfaithful participants are the promoted messengers. The new kissing cardinal-to-be will endorse heresy and condemn orthodoxy. Bishop Strickland’s persecution for “not being nice” will keep other bishops from speaking the truth even as evil becomes more blatant. China will continue to persecute actual Catholics while their own communist “catholics” will be coddled by Rome. Fr. Rupnik will keep his faculties and his $$$ but will have to be more discreet in his “undercover” work since the Jesuits will not be able to cover for him as meticulously as before. And, as a segue into the current secular issues, the mainstream media and politicians will continue to hate the Catholic Church and will do all they can to promote immoral clergy while simultaneously mocking and berating the clergy and laity who strive to uphold morality.
       Also in the secular world, you already know that the media will do all they can to denounce Trump and anyone associated with him, not for his real moral shortcomings (for they actually like his immorality) but for all sorts of imaginary and delusive offenses. Hunter Biden will be protected until his father is no longer useful as a tool against Trump. Both political parties will act like they contain the fullness of morality and will only pretend that there is a war going on between them—one of good vs evil—while all members of both sides suck deeply on the breast of anyone who will enrich them, regardless of the cost to the country. The right will be censored by the left (even Country songs are no longer safe!) while the left decries the censorship of the right. The news will continue to lie to protect its largest advertisers. Social media will continue to shadowban and outright cancel anyone the government tells them to. Fake women (males, but certainly not real men) will continue to steal athletic awards and even beauty pageants from females while feminists cheer on their degrading actions. And, bringing this section to a close by combining both Church and secular news once again, so-called “Catholic” schools, colleges, and universities will lead the way in the moral degradation of your children and grandchildren as they try to out-secularize the secular schools, colleges, and universities.
       Ok. Now you don’t need to watch the news for a few more months. Or years. Except for the weather. It is summer in Florida. It will be hot and humid with a good chance of thundershowers. Now you don’t need anything more.
       By the time you read this, I will be back to my normal schedule. I won’t be driving as much as I did last week so I won’t be listening to so much bad news. I really do recommend that you take a break from the news as well. It was anything but uplifting or even helpful. I listened because there are only so many rosaries I can actually pray (instead of just going through the motions) a day. I liked listening to some of the Relevant Radio shows when I could tune in that program. I only found one station playing classical music but it went out of range pretty quickly. I listened to country and classic rock and I even heard the country song that was subsequently banned by Country Music Television (a channel I have never heard of before) because the artist, Jason Aldean (a man I had never heard of before), turned out to be a Trump supporter, so his song (Try that in a small town) about how, in a small town, you won’t get away with the horrific and immoral but now-normal things that make up big city life, had to be labeled as racist, white supremist, homophobic, sexist, and orange. Or something like that. I took it as simply a song about how people living in small towns stick up for one another and for (for the most part, anyway) old-fashioned morality. I would guess that a large number of country music artists and listeners support Trump and support small-town life. Is CMT pulling a Bud Light? I hope Jason becomes a millionaire because of the hatred shown by the big city leftists (a pretty good guess on my part as to who would do this) who canceled him.
       On my time off I drove around Florida visiting people and places I rarely get to see. From Crystal River to Miami, from St. Petersburg to Palatka, I drove and listened and returned home. Here’s this priest’s take on this one particular aspect of my travels: listening to hours of confessions is preferable to listening to hours of the news! The sins I hear in the confessional are from repentant sinners who crave and then receive God’s mercy. Sins heard on the news are generally from braggarts and hooligans who willfully embrace and promote their sins, distancing themselves from God. What a difference!

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka

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