Strange Things In The World And Church

From the Pastor:    Strange Things In The World And Church

       This week I will start by acknowledging some of the strange things passing as “normal” in the world right now. For starters, Miss Maryland is a male. Yes, he calls himself a “she” (or some other non-male pronouns), and everyone goes along with it, but he is still a he and he stole the crown from a she. The judges, by proclaiming him the winner, devastatingly degraded women and yet everybody acted as if this was some sort of milestone for women. Hogwash. The other contestants were too fearful to openly speak out against his win, though several later did so anonymously, such as this one quoted in The Daily Signal. “A transgender woman gets crowned during the first day of transgender Pride Month?” she asked. “It did not seem like a coincidence. Especially when the owner of the pageant is a transgender woman herself. I was feeling like neither myself nor my fellow contestants had a fair opportunity from the beginning.” Yes, the fix was in and everyone knows it. But it is only “haters” who think that a woman should win a woman’s beauty contest. “Normal” people see nothing wrong with telling some of the most beautiful women in Maryland that they are uglier than a feminized man. At least when men pretending to be women dominate women’s sports it simply shows that males are, by and large, stronger and faster than women. But when males are now called more beautiful than women, we cross a whole new line of nastiness toward females.
       Along those same lines of people pretending that everything is normal when someone unfit wins a title, we just saw something similar happen in politics. Our “staunchly Catholic” President has been openly displaying mental incompetence for quite some time now. The mainstream journalists have done everything possible to portray him as the opposite of what he is and have branded reality as “right-wing” and “conspiracy theory” and other such nonsense. World leaders have had to help him as he wandered off at meetings, he has shaken hands with numerous invisible people, and babbled incoherently on a regular basis, yet even video proof has been labeled, “cheap fake.” Until the recent Presidential debate, that is. Somehow the word got out to all of the immoral (I believe their collective actions, words, and lies go far beyond incompetence) so-called journalists and reporters that they were finally free to say what, until then, only the “haters” said about him, namely, that he is not fit to run for re-election. They still haven’t admitted that he is not fit to remain in office at this time, either, but that is a hurdle still too high for them to leap. But far be it for me to be bringing this up just to point out that Kamala Harris should actually be the current President of the United States and Democrat nominee. I bring it up because as bad as the reporting has been on this topic and as much as everyone around him—including and especially his wife and other family members—are, in my opinion, guilty of elderly abuse for what they are putting him through (and what they are probably putting him on) I am more concerned with what our Bishops have been doing and saying about him, for his mental capacity is robust compared to his grasp of morality.
       People may, in good conscience, argue all day long about just how addle-brained a man can be before he should resign or be removed from his post, but to excuse the grossly immoral positions our President has so often publicly taken and to allow, nay, demand, that he be given Holy Communion, goes beyond the pale. There has been no attempt to hide, whitewash, or deny in any way his public statements promoting abortion at any time and without restrictions of any sort. They are, rather, held up as trophies. The rest of his immoral stances need not even be mentioned, for that one foundational topic—life—should be enough to bring canonical action upon him from his own Bishops, prioritizing his salvation over his re-election. Yet they cover for him at least as much as the so-called journalists did until last week. What will be the “debate moment” that will finally shake them out of their spiritual apathy and allow them to proclaim that The Emperor Has No Clothes (Sanctifying Grace)?
       And that brings us from something strange but purely secular (a fixed beauty pageant) to something strange that is both secular and religious (a “Catholic” President), to something strange that is purely religious, but, since the Catholic Faith should be the underpinning of everything, its strangeness also embraces the secular world even if the world doesn’t know it. I simply name here Pope Francis, Cardinal Zen, Archbishop Vigano, Bishop Schneider, Fr. James Martin, and Fr. Marko Rupnik. People’s reaction to this short list of Catholic clergy will correlate exactly with how they view the above-mentioned “strangenesses.” I need not write a thing about any of them, for their interactions (or lack thereof) are so well-known that everyone can easily  label each of them as either one of the “good guys” or the “bad guys” depending on their point of view of “normal.”
       My point to all of this is to remind you that “normal’ is no longer a marker of morality. Unless and until the Church leaders and members return to the true Faith, the world will not be healed. Do your part: stay fully, faithfully, and joyfully Catholic, for today’s “normal” Catholics will not reach Heaven.

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