A New Day is Dawning
In an essay published on this website on June 15, 2019, I wrote in Will God Give Us a Third Chance? my great concern for the Church, still at that time asleep in a comfortable status quo, still taking her ease. A hungry pack of thieves and robbers – growing and expanding their power in America, in the world, and in the Church! – had continued their subterfuge with growing success. I saw at that time – with dismay – the unconcern spread wide, far and high in the institutional Church. And now, today, March 1, 2021, with many in the Church and the world still preoccupied with only what is within arm’s reach, and blind to what is climbing over the broken and weakened walls, invading and in-filling both Church and State – today I was on the verge of despair.
BUT! This morning I see a sign of great hope. A strong and faithful bishop, Bp. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas is cooperating with a small group of committed laity to build with his permission in his diocese a multifaceted Catholic Center – an intentional faithful Catholic community, “Now in the planning stages, Veritatis Splendor will be a spiritual home where Christians can develop, nurture and preserve all of the chief truths and teachings of Christendom.”
I invite my readers to read the wonderful news in the National Catholic Register, HERE.
The website of the planned Center, named Veritas Splendor (named after the papal encyclical of Pope St. John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth) is a must-see as well. You may well want to write for more information.
I also include below the three main points of my 2019 essay published on this website:
Point 1 from 2019, “Will God Give Us a Third Chance?” – the danger is dark and deadly:
The transformation of America that Obama worked toward, has become only more frightening and possible now, than it was then. The “advance”, from liberal to progressive to socialist to the end of our democratic republic, is today more clearly and obviously the Democrat Party trajectory, than it was before. The quest of man – a godless City of Man – was made visible in the ancient Tower of Babel (Gen 11), and has been sought ever since. Man lusts for the freedom from God that gives him full reign to do whatever he pleases. The danger to all of our authentic and God-given freedoms as Americans, from the freedom of religion on down, is more threatened now than ever before in our history. As St. Mother Teresa observed, where a child in the womb is not safe, having no intrinsic right to life, no human person is safe; no human right is safe.
The culture has been dumbed down sufficiently, the churches have been secularized sufficiently, that both democracy and living faith are no longer safe. Both could virtually be lost at the same time in one election cycle. Man’s lust for “freedom from religion,” growing today, could be satisfied under force of law, in one election cycle. Socialism is no longer a bad word; God is optional, indeed, irrelevant; right and wrong are mere passing opinions, and besides, see how our economy is booming! We were close to the tipping point in 2016, indeed a majority of voters were fine with the “new morality” of godless “political correctness” and we are even more perilously close now, 2019. Some say the progressives lost only by the out-dated system of the Electoral College: they “actually” won by the popular vote. I say no; you lost because God had mercy on America and on the world – perhaps just this one more time.
Point 2 from 2019, “Will God Give Us a Third Chance?” – God sent an unexpected reprieve:
When in 2016 [Hillary] Clinton was defeated and Trump won, as most of America I was stunned. But I was also trembling inside, knowing that God had just given America, and the rest of the endangered world, one undeserved and perhaps last chance. The Church – the Church He sent – He gave one undeserved and perhaps last chance! His Church was sent to be light in this dark and darkening world! His Church was sent to bring Truth to lost human persons! That creation sent to be His Church, I weep and groan within to say, has become so compromised, so institutionalized, so impoverished within and so monetized and commercialized outwardly, that she is hardly distinguishable from the culture she was sent to save. This Church has learned nothing these past three years! She continues on her own way as before; she continues her outward adornments, she chases the latest fashions, she echoes the latest fads; she ignores the disease in her soul.
Point 3 from 2019, “Will God Give Us a Third Chance?” – The Church continues in wide-spread famine:
The Church needs divine supernatural grace – His holy Life! The Church needs our Mother Mary! The Church needs His Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth! In His grace, if we will entrust ourselves to Him, with His sacraments, in the Catholic moral life, growing in prayer with and through our Mother Mary, we can again find Him, we can again receive and believe Him, we can again live our human lives in holiness, in Him. This is His will: our holiness – which will be light in this darkening godless world. Light meant for the many, is entrusted first to the few, that they might carry it to the others, those meant to be our brothers and sisters.
We the Church need to repent and return. The world needs the Church, though they know it not, and the Church needs to repent and return, though many seem to know it not – even now, we are preoccupied with trivia and neglectful of the essentials, “while men were sleeping.”
I don’t know what it will take, for our pastors to reject the ever-incoming waves of “the latest” parish renewal programs and turn to the saints, the fathers and doctors of the Church for the time-tested and proven sources of faith formation. We have an excellent Catechism – why aren’t we using it? We have teachers of prayer who have “been there” on the mountain top, and have left us a heritage of spiritual wisdom – why won’t we listen to them?
BUT no, here in 2021 we are not deserted or abandoned: God has heard the cries of His poor. The Splendor of Truth continues to radiate. The most Holy Spirit is moving still, and awakening His people – even if only a few at a time. He can work grand transformations in a glance, in a blink, in a moment, and mountains can move and deserts can erupt in fruitfulness, all in His perfect time.
To quote from the Sunday morning Liturgy of the Hours, in this time of Lent, now March 2021:
Today is holy to the LORD your God. Do not lament, do not weep; for today is holy to our LORD. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength! (Nehemiah 8:9,10b)
