A Guest Post

This week we have a guest post. This post is from someone who has recently studied at the seminary, and felt he had something to add to my topic. He has a couple blogs of his own that I find are very good. You can visit his baking blog at http://raisingdoughblog.com/ and his poetry blog at https://fromfingertipstofiction.wordpress.com/

For two years, I have been ashamed of my church. I have sat and watched in silence as church leaders denied the right of the sacraments to the faithful, employed every strategy to fracture the community and spent every effort to isolate those trusted to their care.

For two years, I have watched my church proclaim this life on Earth as the greatest good, cheapening the experience and reality of heaven. I have watched bishops, priests, and even popes spread the message that your faith is not worth dying for. That the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, the many sacrifices of all the saints and martyrs were all for naught. They were foolhardy and even dangerous by the standards of the modern church, which has taken to reciting the pharisee’s prayer praising itself for its charity while ignoring and at times restricting access to the faithful’s every need save but one.

I have watched as the Church deludes itself into believing they have the power to stop a virus. The right to not get infected is the same as the right not to get hit by a hurricane or swept up in a flood. We have very little control over what nature brings our way. We can however control our response to it. The book of Job offers us an example of how to respond to God. “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

This could have and should have been our response to Covid. By this, I don’t mean a callous disregard for everyone or an unwillingness to make any effort to contain the virus. But it would have been nice to see Church leaders who have spent the past two millennia proclaiming the virtue of humility to admit they’re not gods over nature and have no more power to stop the spread of viruses than they have to prevent rain or snow. I expect as much from the cold and calculating CDC but those who act in persona Christi have effectively aided our government in spreading the worldly gospel of fear, suspicion, and doubt while eclipsing the gospel message of faith, hope, and love.

This is not easy to say, and it breaks my heart but the saints of today must rise up and save the Church by speaking out against her. The actions of our leaders during this time of crisis have been motivated by fear and our government and health agency’s extreme eagerness to use Satan’s tool of a noble lie. Those responsible for the welfare of the bride of Christ have been content to see her bound and gagged. The gospel bears Jesus’ message of separating the goats from the sheep. When Jesus says, “I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me,” will the Church remember that for a time it forbade this act of mercy going against not only cannon law and human decency but also the most basic tenet of the Christian faith, to care for those in need?

I cannot be silent any longer. I must speak up because I love my Church. I urge the priest, the bishops, and even our Holy Father, the pope to remember their vows and their mission. I urge them to reflect on the last two years and ask themselves the hard questions. Was I following the will of God or satisfying my own need to be seen as virtuous? Can I stand before the gates of Peter and defend my decision before God to exile the sick and the lonely, my decision to deny the homebound the grace of the sacraments, my decision to treat everyone as a threat, an enemy to be subdued rather than a person to be loved? 

As mask and vaccine mandates come to a halt, I pray this Lent may be a return to grace for the Church. Let us come back together and see each other as they truly are, not a threat to be feared, subdued, or isolated, but a child of God to be loved. Our first and foremost duty is to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. In order to restore the Church, our leaders must admit that they got things wrong. That they treated peoples as threats with no evidence of any sort of disease or ailment. That in their zeal to stop Covid, they alienated members of the community and treated the entire population like the Pharisees treated the leper colonies. 

I can think of countless saints that died from illness because they chose to spend their last moments caring for the sick. These are the sheep that will be welcomed into heaven. Yet if they had been alive today, they would have been villainized and rejected by the Church for foolishly risking the spread of the virus. I must address those that have used religion as a shield from judgment. For those who say that Jesus would mask and vax, I must remind them that Jesus and his disciples would not even wash their hands before meals and for that he was judged by the Pharisees, the church leaders of his times. There will come a day when the Church must choose between the ways of Christ and the ways of the world. If the Church refuses to learn from their Covid response, they will no doubt choose the ways of the world, leaving Christ alone and abandoned on the cross, and all his sacrifices will come to naught.

I still have hope for the Church, and I still believe the gates of hell will not prevail, but I hope and pray that there will never again be a time when the gates of heaven, the bishops and priests and Pharisees of our time, will assail the bride of Christ. Let this Lent and this Easter be a return to grace, a retreat from judgment, and a welcome to every saint and sinner. Let the Church carry out her divine mission and ignore the dishonest, deceptive, and devious tactics employed by the world. It is time for the Church to rise up without fear. Jesus tells us not to fear those who can harm the body but only those who can destroy the soul. It is far past time for us Catholics to take him seriously.