It’s Iimi! Desperate Defiance (Part II)

“Amnesty lasts until you walk out the door,” Paula was warned. But she declined to accept it. How will Thea balance discipline in a way that gets her point across while still showing love and mercy when Paula is determined to commit… Desperate Defiance.

It’s Iimi! Desperate Defiance (Part I)

Paula asks Thea for permission to skip the review days before finals. Thea refuses because she knows that Paula desperately needs those days to recover her grades after the chaos of the past year, and because she knows Paula’s mother has insisted on making sure that Paula keeps her grades up. Will Paula accept? Or will she decide to make an act of… DESPERATE DEFIANCE 

A Foolish Rebellion

He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Matthew 19:4–6)

 

In response to the CDF response about whether a same-sex relationship can be blessed, we have—tragically—seen a group of priests and—shamefully—even some bishops denounce it or state that they will defy the Church over this. In doing so, they have rejected the teaching authority of the Church. It is indefensible^§. 

 

The outrage over the so-called “intolerance” within the Church is nonsense. The Catholic teaching has always recognized that the only legitimate exercise of the sexual act is between one man and one woman in a lifelong relationship open to accepting whatever children God may send. Anything that violates that design must be rejected as contrary to what God has taught.

 

Moreover, the moral obligations taught by the Church are not about power. They are about how me must live if we want to keep God’s commandments (cf. Matthew 28:20), obedience to which are required of us if we profess to love God (John 14:15). Indeed, Jesus Christ explicitly declared that doing God’s will is mandatory (Matthew 7:21-23). He also made clear that (Luke 10:16) “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

 

The people who think they are justified in opposing the Church over a teaching they dislike are taking part in a foolish rebellion. If they know that the Church teaches with God’s authority then they are rebelling against God. But if they do not know or believe that the Church teaches with God’s authority, then what do they think they are they doing? As Pope Francis said (10/23/13):

 

In this, the Church is like Mary: the Church is not a shop, she is not a humanitarian agency, the Church is not an NGO. The Church is sent to bring Christ and his Gospel to all. She does not bring herself—whether small or great, strong or weak, the Church carries Jesus and should be like Mary when she went to visit Elizabeth. What did Mary take to her? Jesus. The Church brings Jesus: this is the centre of the Church, to carry Jesus! If, as a hypothesis, the Church were not to bring Jesus, she would be a dead Church. The Church must bring Jesus, the love of Jesus, the charity of Jesus.

 

Unfortunately, too many people make the error of assuming that Christ’s love is permissive… and if the Church says that some actions are morally wrong, they claim the Church is acting against Christ. But they forget that Christ told the woman caught in adultery to, “Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.” (John 8:11). God forgives us when we repent after sinning. But if we do not repent and expect a “free pass” for the sins we do not feel sorry for, we make a mockery of what Jesus went through for us.

 

None of this permits us to treat other sinners with contempt or cruelty. We need to reach out to them and show compassion as we help them return to God’s love. But the adage is still true about loving the sinner but hating the sin. If we believe Jesus Christ is God, then we need to realize that He does not contradict Himself between the Old and New Testament. Yes, God gradually moved the Israelites away from the harsh punishments of the region, but He never said that evil was now good^†.

 

People may invent arguments claiming that things condemned in the Bible are about unrelated topics^‡, but these are fabrications. It is not only the intention behind an act that makes it wrong. It also includes acts that are wrong by themselves. Temple Prostitution is wrong when used for idolatry, yes. But it is also wrong when used for purposes other than idolatry.

 

So, this foolish rebellion will accomplish nothing in the eyes of God. A blessing for a sin will not be a valid blessing. It will merely be a blasphemous act that puts their souls at risk and misleads those who think that there is no sin. These men will only cause harm, no matter how sincere they are about their actions.

 

Such actions will only lead themselves and others to ruin. 

 

________________________________

 

(§) I do not know whether the CDF will publicly or act behind the scenes against these clergy. But regardless of how they approach it, we can be sure that they did wrong.

 

(†) Some try to point to the Jewish dietary or cultic laws to argue that as we do not follow those, we ought not to be bound by the laws concerning sexual morality either. But this shows religious illiteracy. Those of us who are gentiles are not bound to keep the dietary and cultic laws of the Jews… that is a major part of Acts 15:1-35 after all. But we are obliged to avoid evil acts (cf. Acts 15:20).

 

(‡) Some dishonest examples include saying that the Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was a sin of “inhospitality” and other condemnations of sexual immorality was merely a condemnation of “temple prostitution.” 

A Time to Choose

Things are falling apart faster than I expected. Certain Catholics (not all of them: I pray this is merely a noisy minority) have gone beyond expressing disagreement and misunderstanding and have started rejecting the authority of the magisterium under Pope Francis. Some openly accuse him and his supporters of heresy. Others think the Pope is incompetent. But the assumption of these individuals is their opinions carry more weight than the teaching of the Pope, and they are deceiving faithful Catholics into going along. Now, each Catholic who professes to be a faithful Catholic will have to make a choice.

The choice every Catholic must make is whether to remain in obedience to the Pope and giving assent when he teaches, or to decide they can be Catholic without the Pope and listen instead to Catholics who say what they want to hear.

Despite slogans of “Answer the question,” what we are seeing is not a Pope who is corrupt or in error with “heroic” Catholics opposing him. This is not about “bashing” the cardinals who issued the dubia. This problem precedes this, and has its roots in factions which have been at war with the Pope, promoting dissent since 2013. These dissenters undermine our faith in Our Lord who built His Church on the rock of Peter, deceiving many into thinking the Pope is destroying the Church.

It saddens me to watch Catholics deceived into deciding they can no longer support the Pope. They think the problems in the Church will vanish once Pope Francis’ pontificate ends. But we have always had confusion and dissent in the Church. History shows that whenever portions of the Church fell into error, it was always the Bishop of Rome who was a beacon to the truth. We’ve had muddled Popes and morally bad Popes, but none of them have taught error. If his critics are right, this will be the first time a Pope has ever taught “error” and encouraged people to follow it.

But this is what Our Lord promised to protect us from. Informed Catholics used to know that the Papacy was the final line in the sand to determine what was bound and what was loosed. If the Pope can teach error (binding error and loosing truth), then we no longer know when truth was taught, and by whom. That’s denying the promise of Our Lord to protect His Church.

So, when it comes to this choice, I make mine to stand with Pope Francis. I trust that God will protect Him from error, and I reject the accusations that our Pope is incompetent or heterodox. That doesn’t mean I deify him or think he cannot sin. It means that since false teaching will endanger souls, God will protect the Pope from making false teachings.

While I believe the dissenters are a minority, I will hold to this position, even if I stand alone, because I believe that being in communion with the Pope is God’s intention for us in being faithful Catholics.

Being Faithful in Small Things Means Being Respectful to the Pope

When people talk about the Catholic Church becoming more faithful, they generally think of a Church that expels the liberals and leaves us with a more conservative Church that was doctrinally pure—according to the preferences of the individual imagining it. It’s easy to understand the temptation. Catholics get tired of dissenting Catholics walking around with seeming impunity and they get tired of what they think are ineffective bishops. Catholics wanted vindication and they didn’t want to keep battling people who claimed to be good Catholics while openly rejecting Church teaching. What people didn’t consider was that this would stand the parable of the lost sheep on its head, where the shepherd who, instead of leaving the 99 to save the one, wouldn’t worry about 70 lost sheep so long as he had 30 good sheep who didn’t stray.

This mindset shows up when Catholics take offense with the Pope’s words about seeking forgiveness from those we wronged. Since this involved the past mistreatment of people with same sex attraction, people reacted with outrage. Some went so far as accusing him of wanting to apologize for Church teaching. That sort of thing happens all the time. The Pope speaks. People rely on out of context quotes and go berserk. They assume mercy means permissiveness, and asking forgiveness for mistreatment means apologizing for Church teaching—even though the Pope specifically rejected this interpretation.

But what makes this troublesome is I’m not talking about radical traditionalists here. I’m talking about people who spent years or even decades defending the Church suddenly treating Pope Francis as if he were a burden to endure and saw themselves as needing to defend the faith in spite of him.

These people will hasten to tell you they are not being unfaithful. They profess obedience to the Church and Pope. I don’t dispute their sincerity. What I dispute is their belief that their behavior is not dangerous. I do not believe a person can withhold loyalty and respect to the Pope in small matters without eventually becoming disloyal and disrespectful in great matters. Our Lord warns us in Luke 16:10, “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” If we can’t trust a person to be respectful and loyal to the Pope in small matters, how can we trust him to be faithful in large matters?

No, I’m not talking about radical traditionalists. I’m talking about Catholics who profess loyalty to the Church and the Pope, but they are patronizing about it. They feel superior to him and think they have a better grasp of Church teaching. They’ll argue that the Pope can make mistakes when speaking as a private person, and not intending to teach the Church (which is true). But they don’t ask if maybe they are the ones who made mistakes in interpreting the Pope or Church teaching itself. They’ll point out that we have bad Popes (which also is true) but they don’t show that Pope Francis is one. In other words, they mention the cases of not being infallible and of bad Popes in order to lead people into thinking the Pope’s might have spoke in error and might be a bad Pope. What they don’t do is prove that the Pope speaks wrongly. They  blame him for the misunderstandings that happen but don’t ask whether there is another cause—like our tendency to focus on one sentence in isolation when we must read his entire statement in entirety if we would understand. 

This is the danger: If one is so confident that they know better than the Pope, they eventually will decide that they can only obey him when they agree with him. The danger though is that Our Lord linked obedience to his Church with faithfulness to Him (see Luke 10:16 and Matthew 18:17), and the Pope is the head of the Church. Even when one might disagree with him on a minor matter, it is wrong to treat him like a fool—even if one is polite in doing so. I’m not advocating papolatry or ultramontanism (two popular ad hominem attacks thrown at Pope Francis’ defenders). I’m simply saying that Catholics who rush to blame him for the confusion caused by religious illiteracy are causing scandal, leading people to mistrust the Pope and the Church. Such people should remember that  Our Lord warns that the fate of those who cause such scandal:

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. 

 

 The Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate (Douay-Rheims), Mt 18:6–7.

A Church of a Billion Popes?

¹² You see those who are wise in their own eyes? 

There is more hope for fools than for them. (Proverbs 26:12).

 

Christianity is a religion focused on knowing, loving and serving God. This consists of placing our faith in Him and keeping His commandments. Catholicism recognizes that this faith and obedience involves hearing and obeying His Church. So, in theory, there should be no problem in knowing where to look when we have disputes over the best way to live our faith. Unfortunately, we do have constant disputes over how to live. Some of it involves Catholics who believe that those entrusted in shepherding the Church are in the wrong. Some of it involves Catholics fighting over the best way to live our Catholic faith. In these cases, we have people usurping the authority to judge over the Church and condemning those who disagree with their views on leading the Church.

That leaves us with a situation where we have a Church of a billion Popes, each one deciding for himself how they and others should live. If the Church teaches differently than he should like, he judges the Church to be heretical. If another Catholic, striving to live faithfully, has a different view on how to best live the Catholic faith, others accuse him of being a “bad Catholic.” But with a billion “popes,” each person also takes offense at another speaking against his own interpretation. Mutual anathemas get hurled—by people who have no right to hurl them—and each person leaves convinced that the Church has gone to hell in a hand basket.

But the Church is not to blame for that situation. The cause is a massive influx of opinion and news (giving us much more minutiae then we would have had even 20 years ago) that, thanks to the smartphone, can reach us anywhere there is wireless phone service. We’re instantly told about what happens, but what we’re told is often untrue or misinterpreted by the reader. We pride ourselves on the ability to pick up our smartphone and read what the media or a blogger claims Pope says, but we seem to have lost our ability to investigate whether there is more to the story than what the headlines say.

(This is the real culprit in why we hear “off the cuff”
remarks from the Pope today but not in the past)

So, when the Pope speaks about many invalid marriages because people enter them without understanding what marriage is, people stop with the headline that screams POPE SAYS 'MOST MARRIAGES INVALID!' In other words, they take the sensational part out of context and accuse him of attacking their own marriage or of trying to undermine the sacrament. I’ve even seen some editorials claim the Pope says most children are bastards (in the literal sense), seemingly never having heard of a putative marriage.

A “church of a billion popes” means a tower of Babel where nobody knows what is going on. But the thing to remember is, the “church of a billion popes” is not the Church we have. The Church we have is the same one we had since Pentecost, AD 33. When it comes to teaching, God protects the Church from leading us astray. When it comes to the shepherds speaking and acting as private individuals (i.e. offering their opinions or living a certain way), we need to remember that until the 21st century, we only rarely heard of them. We only know of St. Peter eating apart from the Gentiles in Galatia because St. Paul saw a need to write about the controversy. Odds are, Christians in Jerusalem or Antioch didn’t hear about it at the time it happened.

That’s important to remember. If we had the internet in earlier centuries, people across Christendom would be rolling their eyes about Pope John XXII and his sermon on the Beatific Vision or of cardinals restraining Urban VI from physically attacking someone he disagreed with. Pope’s don’t behave impeccably, and sometimes they do things we wish they didn’t...

What Catholics need to remember is we don’t suddenly have a heretic or an idiot in charge of the Holy See. We don’t have a case where a Pope is suddenly reckless about his words and actions while his predecessors were flawless in word and deed. This sort of thing has always been with us. It’s only recently that we’ve had instant access to what the Pope says and does, and we think nobody else acted this way.

That brings us to what makes a “church of a billion popes” dangerous. Nobody considers the possibility that their own knowledge of the situation is lacking—that would feel like an admission we are stupid. We assume that our interpretation of a text is what the author meant and do not consider the cultural differences or our education drawing us to a meaning the author never meant. Whether it’s a Bible literalist or a radical traditionalist, people are out there who confuse Church teaching with what they think a Church teaching means and then blame the Church for their own confusion. Then they take their own misinterpretation and condemn the Pope, the bishops or fellow Catholics for not accepting their view as Church teaching.

What we have to remember is there are not a billion popes. There is one Pope, and that Pope is Pope Francis. We have to remember that when he teaches, his teaching is not one of a billion opinions but something we have to give our assent to (see Code of Canon Law #749-752). When he says or something that is not teaching, we still have to be respectful to him—even if we wish he handled it differently.

We must also remember there are different ways to carry out our obedience to the Church and, so long as we are not seeking to justify disobedience in doing so, we can disagree (charitably!) on the best way to follow Church teaching. For example, we can never justify abortion and be a good Catholic, but we can disagree about the best way to deal with gun violence in our nation without being a “bad Catholic.” To demand that another Catholic embrace your opinion on the subject is to make yourself one of a billion popes again.

Dealing with the confusion within the Church is not a matter of muzzling Pope Francis or turning back Vatican II. It’s a matter of realizing who the successor of Peter is (not us), realizing God protects His Church, and realizing that we are living in a wholly new situation in sharing data where fact checking and context is often far slower than the quotes we see. It’s a matter of realizing our own limitations in comprehension and rejecting the idea of our interpretation being the same as what the Pope or other Church documents said.

If we can remember and follow this, we have a Church with one Pope who is the successor of Peter. If we forget it, we have a Church with a billion popes and the chaos which goes with it. So when considering how to act, let’s remember that the Church our Lord made has only one Pope.

Hijackers

The Catholic Church is led by the magisterium—the Pope and the bishops in communion with him, with the priests passing on the teaching in the parish level—who have the authority and the responsibility to teach the Catholic faith, and to determine what is and what is not in keeping with the Catholic faith. The rest of us cooperate in this teaching mission to the extent that we accurately present the Church teaching. It stands to reason that the Pope and the bishops can’t be everywhere at once, and the lay Catholic needs to explain and defend the faith.

However, once Catholics try to establish a “Catholic ministry” that is in actual opposition to the teaching of the Church as passed on by the Pope and bishops in communion with, they are no longer faithful Catholics, but hijackers.These hijackers appeal to figures of renown within the Church and Church documents to either give credibility to their own position, or to discredit the teachers of the magisterium who teach something they dislike.

Of course what they think the Church should be conveniently reflects their own behaviors and rejects the views of the Church when she teaches against the preferred behavior. Thus we see Catholics openly treat bishops with contempt when they teach and give heed to Catholic bloggers who have no authority to claim that their views represent authentic Catholicism. 

When we see Catholic blogss treating the Pope with open contempt because they dislike Laudato Si, that is a clear sign that the person is a hijacker and not presenting an authentic Catholic teaching. When we see Catholics dismissing the authority of the bishops to teach on the death penalty or the defense of marriage, that too is a clear sign that the attacker is a hijacker. Heed the warning signs—such a person is attempting to make themselves a counter-magisterium and take the faith to a new generation.

The fact is the Pope has authority over things far beyond making ex cathedra statements. As the Vatican I document, Pastor Æternus, says:

If then any shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those things which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fullness of this supreme power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the Churches and over each and all the pastors of the faithful; let him be anathema. (Chapter III)

This doesn’t mean the Pope or the bishop has the right to “say whatever the hell he wants,” of course. But nobody is claiming he can in the first place. Such accusations that he is doing so only demonstrates that the accuser has nothing more than a superficial understanding about the Church teaching he or she disputes. If one looks at Pope Francis and his teachings, one will find the same concepts being used by his predecessors.

For example, the Church has never supported indiscriminate capitalism, indiscriminate use of the environment, indiscriminate use of the death penalty or war. But hijackers use the either-or fallacy in order to portray the Pope or bishops as holding the contrary position. If the Pope speaks of the evils of unrestrained capitalism, that is seen as endorsing socialism (which the Church condemns). When the Church condemns the abuse of the environment, she is accused of being on the side of Al Gore. When she speaks against particular wars and particular applications of the death penalty, she is accused of contradicting previous Popes and bishops.

But the either-or fallacy fails because the contradiction to a universal claim is not the opposite universal claim (All men are honest vs. no men are honest). The contradiction is done by demonstrating that some things or people do not fall into that universal claim. If one claims that all capitalism is good, one doesn’t refute it by claiming no capitalism is good. One can refute it simply by proving Some capitalism is not good. There’s a huge difference.

The Church, in challenging the world, is not saying that all things in a category are bad. She doesn’t teach (contrary to modern claims) that All Sex is bad. She teaches that sex taken out of its proper context is bad. The content in which it is good is marriage between one man and one woman in a lifelong relationship which is open to the possibility of offspring. But hijackers misrepresent her position into saying that because the Church does not say “all sex is good,” it means she teaches “no sex is good,” and encourage people to rebel against the Church—but the rebellion is against something that does not exist.

Ultimately, the obligation of the Catholic is to discern the sources they use for information about the Church. If the sources are putting themselves in opposition to the magisterium and claiming they are giving you the “true story” about the Church or claim that they are being more like Jesus than the magisterium, you can be certain that they are simply hijacking the label of Catholic to give their position of rebellion an illusion of credibility. We have to reject these false teachers.

This is done by studying the faith, so that when we run into hijackers, we can discern their distortions. We also have to look to the Pope and the bishops with trust as having the authority to teach in a binding way and recognizing that when our understanding runs afoul of the Church teaching, we have to be very careful when we are tempted to label our own interpretation as true and the magisterium is false. Remember, God didn’t give us the charism of infallibility.

Corruptio Optimi Pessima (Corruption of the Best is the Worst)

(The Temptation of Jesus—James Tissot)

Very few people set out with the intention of “Hey! I’m going to be an evil bastard!” But many people who start out with the intention of being good do wind up with the end result of having done evil.

Consider that statement. I bet a lot of us immediately thought of other people as falling under this category. I also bet that very few thought of ourselves. That means we’re either a bunch of saints (in which case, consider 1 Corinthians 10:12), or we’re blind to our failings. Personally I think the second option best describes our lives.

The fact is, the devil is out to ruin every one of us individually, and every one of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. The intention of the devil is to play on our weaknesses—our passions, our opinions, and so on. Unfortunately, we tend to be blind to this. We expect the devil to come with a direct attack against what we find important. A lot of our apocalyptic religious fiction tends to work that way. If you look at the Left Behind series or the Michael O’Brien novel Father Elijah, we see an antichrist who is a political liberal. He gives people what they want in terms of libertine debauchery and undermines the Church by turning people away from it. And this is happening today. We see this, and we make our decision to be faithful—praying to God that we be given the grace to stand in the face of persecution or seduction.

But what we don’t consider is that the devil wants our damnation as well. It doesn’t please him to destroy our body if our soul is brought to God. Some have apostatized in the past in the face of persecution, but others have stood firm with the grace of God supporting them. Some have been seduced into accepting libertine behavior, but others have not—through the grace of God. Are we to think that the devil will only succeed in trapping the political left and the weak minded, and as long as we’re politically “conservative” we’ll be safe?

I think we would be foolish to think so. The devil has other tactics besides the use of brute force. One of them is to deceive people into thinking that they are in the right while others who disagree are wrong—even if that disagreement comes from the magisterium of the Church. When one refuses to consider the possibility of being wrong, how can they repent and turn back to God? If one refuses to consider that the Church teaching is right when it goes against the individual’s own preferences,are no longer giving the religious assent that even the ordinary magisterium requires (See CCC #892).

But the whole point of metanoia is turning away from sin and towards God again. It requires being sorry for the wrong we have done. In metanoia we have the change of perspective in our lives. We realize that what we have been doing is not compatible with what God calls us to be and we want to change to be what God calls us to be. We can’t do it without His grace, but if we refuse to consider the possibility of our doing wrong, we won’t be open to seeking that grace. 

This is how people are corrupted. They deceive themselves into thinking they are good Catholics even when they are refusing to obey the successors to the Apostles—whom they deceive themselves into thinking are bad Catholics. This is not something limited to one theological outlook. The rebellion of the liberals in the 1960s forward is being taken up by conservative dissent today…the arguments used to defy the Church over Humanae Vitae in 1968 is being used to defy Pope Francis here and now. 

This is the corruption of the best intentions—to be faithful to God and the Church, and in corrupting such people, they become the worst. We need to pray that God open our eyes so we might see where we fall, so we might turn back to Him. Let us not be so sure that we are right that we ignore the flaws that might lead to our fall...

Hating the Word of Salvation

2. “Whilst the guilty approach unto me to eat up my flesh” [Psalm 27:2]. Whilst the guilty come near to recognise and insult me, that they may exalt themselves above me in my change for the better; that with their reviling tooth they may consume not me, but rather my fleshly desires. “Mine enemies who trouble me.” Not they only who trouble me, blaming me with a friendly intent, and wishing to recall me from my purpose, but mine enemies also. “They became weak, and fell.” Whilst then they do this with the desire of defending their own opinion, they became weak to believe better things, and began to hate the word of salvation, whereby I do what displeases them.

 

[Augustine of Hippo, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 8, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 64.]

America, to be blunt, is metastasizing into something terrible and dangerous—a perversion of what it was intended to be. It prides itself as being the most advanced defender of freedom, while it is actually moving backwards to where the freedoms we thought were inalienable are now quite alienated—where the rights for all have been replaced with government privileges for favored groups. The Church has warned against this decline, and has been declared an “enemy of freedom” for her pains.

It is no longer even enough for Americans to tolerate relativism about morality that was pushed through out the 1980s and 1990s. Then, the insistence was people should be allowed to believe whatever they like and people who disagree with this position should have no right to impose otherwise. Today, whoever does not accept the current diktat about changing morality to accept what was once condemned as morally wrong can expect to be viewed with suspicion at best and, increasingly, hostility which is unchecked—and even encouraged by—the government.

Christians who have not compromised (and that number is sadly dwindling) and reject the idea that we can change morality to suit themselves are greeted with increasing hostility. It’s no longer a case of:

Now it’s a case of “If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed!"

We can see this in the antics by the media over the Church. An attempt to co-opt the Catholics by misrepresenting the words of the Pope and trying to make the Pope appear to be in opposition to the bishops, the Pope has said too many things standing up for the traditional Catholic teaching. Only the least informed still believe he is going to change the teaching of the Church. So, we’re seeing the media move away from the lie that “Even your Pope is with us,” towards seeing an increase in hostility towards the Church in general.

This increased hostility is simply because the Church will not go along with calling evil “good.” The world wants approval for its sins. But the Church will not give this approval. The Church speaks out against many things that the world wants to do. Not because she is reactionary, or ornery. She speaks out because she is tasked with going out to the world in order to spread the Word of Salvation and to speak out against the behaviors which separate humanity from God.

The world does not mind a belief in God. What it does is resent a belief in God which requires change in behavior. People who want to think of themselves as “good,” resent being told that they do evil—especially when the evil condemned is something they do not want to give up. People have no problems speaking against evil which offends them, but tell them that the behavior they like is wrong and people become hostile.

The message of the Church is simple:

• God Exists and loves us.
• But, we are alienated from Him.
• He sent His Son to free us from our sins and restore our relationship with Him—which is impossible to do apart from Him
• We must respond by ceasing to live in a way which separates us from Him

Unfortunately, people don’t want the conditions of repentance. They want Cheap Grace, where God’s grace is given them without needing to do anything. They hate the requirement that we respond to God’s call in any meaningful way. But most people don’t want to actually reject God outright. They want to think of themselves as being “good.” So they respond by pretending that anything in the Christian message which says they are sinners who need to repent must be invented by the Church. The Church is seen as “cold and bureaucratic” because she insists on being faithful to God’s Great Commission.

Ultimately, the hostility to the Church in these matters is a rebellion against God while people pretend they are not rebelling against God. People tell themselves that if only the Church would change, things would be fine. But the problem is, the Church is only teaching what God has taught. If people hate this teaching, they are hating the Word of Salvation—even if they try to pretend that they love God.

People want what H. Richard Niebuhr called “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” But that is not the reality. It is the complete perversion of the truth.

People have free will of course. They can refuse to accept what God called them to do (repent) and can refuse to hear the means He chose to reach out to them (the Church). But they need to realize that, in doing so, they are not rejecting a human group. They are rejecting God (Luke 10:16). That’s pretty serious. We need to realize that this life and this world is not all there is. What we are called to goes beyond the present. What we choose to do has consequences. If we choose what goes against God’s call, and refuse to repent, we will eventually discover that we have used our free will to our ruin. It will not be a case of God being petty or the Church being bureaucratic. It will be a case of us refusing to board the ship before it sails. Once it sails, it will be too late to get on board. 

(How Can A Person Blame God or the Church, Once the Ship Has Sailed, When the Person Was the One who Refused to Board In the First Place?)

²¹ Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ ²³ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

Reflections on the Anti-Francis Mindset

Introduction

One thing seems clear from reading comments and articles from a certain subset of Catholics is that we do have a strongly anti-Francis mindset that exists in the Church. To this mindset, the Pope is to blame for how the media reports his words and is believed to have whatever motive the media attributes to their report on his words. It can be quite demoralizing for the Catholic trying to be faithful, and encountering Catholics who seem much more confident in their allegations than they are in questioning them. It’s easy for these Catholics to begin to doubt themselves and wonder if they have perhaps missed the point because they continue to run into these allegations.

The problem with this mindset that demoralizes others and undermines trust in the Pope is it assumes two things that needs to be proven:

1. That the media reports are accurate.
2. That the motives attributed to the Pope are true.

Unless both can be established, it is a rash judgment to assume bad will or bad teaching from the Pope.

Thus far it turns out that every time the media has focussed a story around the Pope planning to change Church teaching by using a quote, that quote was only a part of what the Pope said and when viewed in context it shows he did not say what the the media reported. When this happens over and over again, a person should recognize that certain sources are simply unreliable. But instead, the anti-Francis mindset assumes the Pope is unreliable.

Shocking News—Arnobius of Sicca blog Denigrates the Pope… OK, not really...

Think of it this way. Look at my first paragraph. See how many quotes you can create that could make me sound like I am opposed to Pope Francis. These are the ones I found with a cursory look:

• “we do have a strongly anti-Francis mindset” (implies I am speaking of the whole Church and I am a part of it).
• “the Pope is to blame for how the media reports his words” (Hey! Even the Papal defender Arnobius of Sicca says it’s the Pope’s fault!)
• “It’s easy for these Catholics to begin to doubt” (when taken with the other two partial quotes, sounds like I am saying the Pope is causing the doubt)

In other words, a person looking for quotes to bolster the image they want to give could even take my own blog which defends the Pope and make it sound like I am blaming him. I did say all of these things. But I didn’t say them in the context one might be led to believe. In fact, I’d oppose all of these claims. I wouldn’t be to blame for a reporter skimming my first paragraph and grabbing a few lines that caught his eye and making a story out of it. It would, in fact, be unjust to say I should have expressed myself better to avoid such misinterpretation. 

Who Watches the Self-Proclaimed Watchdogs of Catholic Authenticity?

That’s how it seems to work with the Pope. For the secular news reporter who has a negative view of the Church teaching, thinking it is judgmental and harsh and wishes it would change, words that talk about loving the sinner and presenting God’s love can sound like “A CHANGE IN TEACHING!” (and there’s another quote in my blog that can be taken out of context). It isn’t any such thing of course. Then the Catholic who has an antipathy towards the Pope—and certain Catholics have been antagonistic to his election to the papacy on account of his stand as cardinal on the extraordinary form of the Mass and have been hostile ever since—see this as justifying their hostility.

Like ripples from a rock thrown into a pond, this mindset affects other Catholics who equate such sites as defenders of Catholic orthodoxy. If they oppose the Pope, some are led to believe that the Pope should  be opposed . . . after all, if it wasn’t true, they wouldn’t have said it right? So the reputation of Pope Francis as heterodox continues to spread. Nobody asks the question as to whether these self-proclaimed watchdogs of orthodoxy are in fact orthodox themselves?

This is a problem because the individual or small group does not have such authority to teach at all—especially if they try to teach contrary to the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. God has entrusted the successors of the apostles with the authority to bind and loose—not people with a blog and a laptop (and, yes, that includes me). The person who tries to advocate opposing the Pope when he teaches is a rebel, not a faithful Catholic.

Does a Political Platform Judge the Catholic Teaching? Or Does the Catholic Teaching Judge the Political Platform?

That brings us to another problem. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was easy to equate conservative politics with Catholic orthodoxy. The Church was strong on her affirmations of abortion, “gay marriage” and similar issues as morally wrong. Politicians who opposed the Church on these things were liberal. Politicians who agreed with the Church were conservative. Simple enough—or so we thought.

It was never that simple. Church teaching and conservative politics never entirely overlapped. In some cases conservatism had positions which were also incompatible with Church teaching. In others, the motives for a shared teaching were difference. The Church had positions on social justice that were sometimes confused with political liberalism. St. John Paul II and Pope emeritus Benedict XVI also spoke on the social problems in capitalism that needed to be reformed—and were accused of “moving to the left.” They spoke on environmental issues—and were accused of "moving to the left.” They spoke on compassion for illegal immigrants—and… well you get the point.

So, what we see happening with Pope Francis, happened before with his predecessors (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11). They were praised for things members of a political happened to agree with (even if held for different motives), and attacked when such groups disagreed. Thus the simultaneous mutual claims by right and left that the Pope supports the other side. Like the Self-Appointed watchdogs mentioned above, political platforms do not have authority to teach. Political parties can take positions that the Church must condemn as incompatible with the Christian obligation. When they do, the Church condemnation is not partisan, but a warning for us to think about where we are in relation to God.

So, when our political beliefs feel threatened by the teaching of the Church, maybe the issue is not a bad Pope. Maybe we’ve adopted a political belief incompatible with the faith.

The Either-Or Fallacy

In addition, we need to remember that there are many times that the truth is not found in the formula of “Either A or B.” Sometimes both A and B are condemnable. Sometimes neither A nor B is condemnable. Republican and Democrat parties disagree with each other, but it is not a case of one being always true and the other always false. Yes, sometimes one party is in error while the other is not. But, sometimes both can be in error. Or sometimes their disagreements are over ways and means which are both in keeping with Church teachings. So we always need to ask what is true, what is in keeping with the Church teaching. That’s not just something we ask about others. It’s what we need to ask about ourselves.

Conclusion

These seem to be the problems with the anti-Francis mindset in the Church. There’s a lot of motives for it, whether misunderstanding or disagreement. But each person who doubts or outright opposes the Pope needs to answer some questions: On what basis do you justify yourself? Pope Francis is not an Alexander VI or John XII. He’s not a John XXII. There’s no moral behavior to scandalize or personal belief to be corrected. Where did your doubt come from? From your own belief? Then how do you know you have not gone wrong yourself? From the assertion of another? How authoritative are they? From your politics? Remember we must “Render unto God.” Do you think he is teaching error? Remember that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.

The fact is, the Church is led by the successors of the Apostles, not the bloggers or the people who prefer the extraordinary form of the Mass. The magisterium has the authority and the responsibility to determine whether a belief is compatible with the teaching of the Church, not the bloggers or the fans of the extraordinary form. That’s ultimately the problem with the anti-Francis mindset. It would rather deny that God protects the Pope from teaching error than admit the possibility of being wrong about what the Church teaching requires us to do.

Now not all of these people are doing this out of malice. Some have simply been deceived by the hype. Some have not thought things through. Perhaps some are acting out of Scrupulosity. But some may have fallen to pride and decided that only when the Church goes their way that it is to be obeyed. I personally won’t judge the reason or the motive. But I will say that the anti-Francis mindset is an error and must be rejected.

"This is a Rebellious People..."

⁹ For this is a rebellious people, 

deceitful children, 

Children who refuse 

to listen to the instruction of the Lord;

¹⁰ Who say to the seers, “Do not see”; 

to the prophets, “Do not prophesy truth for us; 

speak smooth things to us, see visions that deceive!

¹¹ Turn aside from the way! Get out of the path! 

Let us hear no more 

of the Holy One of Israel!” (Isaiah 30:9-11)

Things are really getting out of hand, and falling much faster than I would have expected, but to some extent, I have to say I am not totally surprised that they are getting out of hand. Just not this fast and this irrationally. What we are seeing is the Pope besieged on both sides now. Conservative Catholics have been opposed to him almost from the word “Go,” determined to establish he is a liberal—if not a heretic. Liberal Catholics are beginning to turn on him now that his words in the Philippines have demonstrated he is solidly a Catholic. Both sides firmly believe he is in the “other” camp.

 

(If you want to know where I stand, regarding the Pope, I stand right here)

 

He is blamed for how others have misinterpreted his words. The allegations are that if he spoke clearly, people would not have misinterpreted him. But that is false reasoning which overlooks that the vast majority of people do not get their words from Vatican Information Service or Zenit or the like, and especially not from transcripts. They get their news from the secular media, which has routinely reported soundbites, ignoring the concept the quote (or partial quote) has come from. Every single time we have looked at a soundbite in context, it has turned out that the secular media has gotten it wrong. For example...

 

The Pope did not say “Who am I to judge?” in the sense of saying he was in favor of same sex relationships. He was saying it in the sense of speaking about a priest with a notorious past who repented. He did not say “breed like rabbits” and speak against large families. He spoke about a specific problem—some people who say they will indiscriminately have children without considering the consequences because they “Trust in” the Lord, which is basically “putting the Lord to the Test” (see Deuteronomy 6:16, Matthew 4:7, Luke 4:12). He did not call for recognizing same sex “marriage” and divorce and remarriage at the extraordinary synod of 2014. He called for finding ways of reaching out to people in these situations. He didn’t condemn capitalism as a system. He called for places where it was causing harm to reform.

 

I could go on and on, and I’m sure the media will...

 

In short, nothing that outraged Catholics was actually said as they interpreted the words to mean, but they still hold these statements against him. It’s even gotten to the point that when the Pope praised mothers and grandmothers for their role in passing on the faith, some people went so far as accusing him of ignoring or denigrating men!

 

But since these people are saying of something that is not so that it is so, we can say they do not speak the truth. The question is, do they know it is not the truth when they say it? Or do they just refuse to consider they could be misinterpreting him? Now, I am not God, so I cannot speak to these people and their intentions. But I can say that if they know they are speaking something that is not true, then that is lying—strongly condemned by the Catechism (CCC #2483-2487). But if they do not know whether what they are saying is true or not, then they are making a rash judgment—also condemned by the Catechism (CCC #2477-2478) and, given how these false accusations are damaging the reputation of the Holy Father, it can also be calumny (CCC #2479) if it is done with the hopes of discrediting him.

 

It's at the point where I think it is far more than just hostility to the misinterpreted words. I suspect that some people dislike the fact that the Holy Father is affirming Church teaching that is unpopular to their political views and seek to discredit him to justify their own disobedience. Some people out there point to the misrepresentations that make him seem indifferent to Church teaching or denigrating people or fomenting heresy, and say that the Pope can’t be trusted, and therefore his teachings can be ignored. Such people seem to be behaving as rebels. They don’t want to hear the unpopular Church teachings—I have heard some people say “Why doesn’t the Pope talk about this instead?” But the point is, if we accuse those Catholics who set aside the teachings on sexual morality as being “cafeteria Catholics,” then we must not be guilty of the same charge. Yes abortion, contraception and homosexual acts are sins. But they are not the only sins. If we choose to set aside teachings on other areas, then we are hypocrites.

 

So it’s important not to be a rebellious people. If we find ourselves challenged by a statement of the Pope, the first thing to do is to ask whether he actually said what was alleged. If it is not, we have to let go of any wrongly placed hurt and not blame him for misrepresentation. Second, we have to ask whether we are upset because his words are challenging us. If they are, then we should consider whether our problem is with God, rather than with the Vicar of Christ. When he teaches, we must listen.

 

 

 

 

Media and Our Conception of the Catholic Faith

An Example of People Ignoring Media Claims About the Church

It’s become common now for the media to make comments about different people and events in the Church that show how they do not understand what the Church teaches. Take for example the article "Woman claims role as Kansas City’s first female Catholic priest | The Kansas City Star.” According to Catholic teaching, only a male can be ordained to the priesthood. St. John Paul II has made it quite clear:

4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. (emphasis added)

So, when we read in articles about women claiming to be ordained and the media treating this as fact, a person who has been paying attention to Church teaching knows that the opposite has been taught by the Church. He or she knows that this is not some new sort of teaching. We recognize that the media is to blame for this, and people who try to promote this as an example of change for the Church are either grossly uninformed about the Church or else are pushing an agenda against Church teaching.

That much seems obvious. We don’t see the National Catholic Reporter or Rorate Cæli (to name the extremes) talking about how wonderful/terrible it is that the Church is “changing” her teaching. 

Too Many Instances of People Accepting Media Claims About the Church—When it Suits Them

So, I find it curious that so many Catholics seeking to be faithful are willing to treat media reports as true when they call Pope Francis a liberal and claim he is overturning Church teaching. Anyone who looks at what his predecessors have said on a topic will find no conflicts, but at most a different way of explaining the Church teaching. The theme of the Pope’s preaching is reaching out to sinners, seeking to bring them back to God. He has said absolutely nothing about changing the faith. He has only said that it’s not enough to stop with stating what is forbidden, and we need to think about how to bring those people in a sinful situation back to the Church. He has repeatedly said that when it comes to Church teaching, he is a faithful son of the Church—on precisely the issues he has been accused of favoring a change.

So it seems clear that anyone who is trying to allege the Pope is changing the Church teaching is either grossly uninformed on what he said and what the Church says probably relying on the MSM and the opinion sites (religious and secular) which are treating the MSM as accurate.

Now of course, we want to avoid the genetic fallacy rejecting any news solely because it comes from a certain source. But we do need to consider the accuracy of a source—how knowledgable it is—when it attempts to report "breaking news” on the Church (which usually comes across looking like THIS). We also want to avoid the argument from ignorance fallacy where we think that because we haven’t heard about a response to a misleading story that it wasn’t responded to.

Instead of Looking to the Church, People Look to the Media Caricature to Confirm What They Already Decided

The antidote to such antics is to look for the Church accounts of things. There are some sites which do a good job of reporting what was actually said, even to the point of providing transcripts (such as Vatican Information Service or ZENIT). I have found that whenever the rapid reporting of the MSM pronounces that the Church under Pope Francis is “changing Church teaching,” it is disproven within a few days at the most. That is why we cannot accept the MSM reporting on the Church at face value. They are acting from lack of understanding and perhaps bias (hoping that the Church will change her views as if they were a political platform).

Basically, when we look for an explanation of the Church teaching, we should turn to the Church, not away from the Church for a reliable answer. That’s not what is being done anymore. When a political pundit defines the Church in terms of his or her own bias, that’s not a reliable answer, but people are using these things to confirm their own views and justify what they were going to do anyway. Whether it’s a political liberal who wants to see a Church transforming into what he or she wants it to be, or whether it’s a conservative who is looking for an excuse to legitimize their rejection of Pope Francis, we are experiencing a situation where instead of being faithful Catholics looking to the Church, we are seeing Catholics who are affirming the Church only when it suits them, and denying it when they run afoul of the teachings.

Conclusion

If liberals want to trumpet their support for Pope Francis, then let them heed his teachings as a “Son of the Church.” If conservatives want to portray themselves as faithful to the Church, then let them start giving assent to the teachings of the current successor of St. Peter, trusting that Our Lord will not fail in His promise to protect the Church under the successor of St. Peter.

If people decide to ignore these things and instead pick and choose what it means to be a Catholic, then that’s hypocrisy—and both liberal and conservative are guilty of the same disobedience, even if they dissent on different grounds. Cafeteria Catholicism is not only a behavior of one political faction.

Making Excuses: What Part of Intrinsic Evil Don't You Understand?

The defenders of torture are still at it, offering all sorts of scenarios as to what sort of circumstances might justify it. "What if someone kidnapped your child? What if someone was going to target a nursery school? Don’t tell me you’d just let them get away with it?” Some of them are more elaborate than that, of course, but it’s making use of the appeal to fear fallacy—you’re invited to imagine the scenario that a loved one was in danger of death, to encourage you to change your mind. But just because we may suffer when we stick to what is right, that is not a sufficient reason for going against what we believe is right.

The problem with these arguments is that they ignore the main issue: That the Church is teaching that torture is intrinsically evil. Intrinsic evil basically means that a certain act is evil by its very nature and can’t be justified by any motivation or circumstance. Torture, Abortion, Contraception, Same sex sexual activity, rape, idolatry, abandoning the faith etc. are all intrinsically evil. The Catholic, properly educated in his or her faith, realizes that these things can never be justified for any reason whatsoever.

The justification of torture is similar to the justification of abortion. Proponents of both appeal to the motive of relieving suffering as if that was the only factor to be considered. But that’s not the only factor. There are actually three factors:

Catholic teaching holds that, to have a good act, we must have the following:

1. The Act itself must be good.
2. The motive for the act must be good.
3. The circumstances surrounding the act must be good.

If one of these are lacking, we cannot call the act good. (Think of a tripod. Then imagine removing a leg. The remaining structure won’t stand up). For example. Donating money to the poor is good. But if my motive is bad (I want to impress a woman so she’ll sleep with me) or the circumstances are bad (the money will be used to buy drugs or alcohol instead of food), the act isn’t good, even if good comes from it.

The irony is that the Catholics seeking to justify torture with exceptions actually reject those exceptions on other issues. For example, they recognize that hardship is not a legitimate reason to justify abortion because it violates the humanity of the unborn child and the mother. They would recognize that an ancient Christian who chose to sacrifice before an idol to avoid being killed would not be justified. (The reverse is true too—some Catholics who recognize torture is wrong for these reasons seem to fail to make the connection when it comes to abortion).

That’s the ultimate problem here. People seem to either be unaware or unwilling to accept that in some things, there is no but what if?  “But isn’t torture justified if a terrorist is going to fly a 747 into a nursery school?” “But isn’t abortion justified if the unborn child was conceived of rape?” “But isn’t apostasy justified if I have ten children who will starve if I get executed for being a Christian?"

The answer is “No.” There are some things that are so important that we cannot sacrifice them at any cost to ourselves. We may never do evil so good may come of it (CCC #1789). We must love God with our whole heart and our neighbor as ourself (Matt 7:12) and love our enemies (Matt 5:43-48).

Now there may be times when a person gets into a terrible situation. It may be our own fault. It may not be our fault. But in such a situation, the choice will be that we either accept the suffering as the sacrifice we need to make to remain faithful to God or to sacrifice our faithfulness to God in order to avoid the harm. If we love God with our whole heart, we know that we must choose in such a way that puts Him first in our life.

Another attempt to defend intrinsic evil is the appeal to a misapplication of double effect. Double Effect, properly understood, recognizes that situations exist where an action has a good intention, but a bad effect that is not intended, and would be avoided if possible. Not Intended is the key provision. If the evil effect is impossible to avoid AND does not outweigh the good effect, then the guilt of doing evil is not considered deliberate and therefore not considered to be sin.

But, if the evil effect is deliberately intended (such as committing torture or abortion), or if the evil effect happens through negligence (for example killing a pedestrian while driving drunk) then we CANNOT claim double effect. The guilt remains for the act and it must be condemned. So, that’s why the removal of the fallopian tube in the case of an ectopic pregnancy is not considered an abortion. The removal of the fallopian tube will cause the death of the unborn child, because there is no medical procedure that can save the child. If it was possible to save the life of the child, that option would be taken. But if the woman and doctors deliberately chose to perform an abortion to save the mother’s life, that would not be double effect. It would be deliberately choosing evil. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says on responsibility and acts:

1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts. (1036; 1804)

1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors. (597)

1736 Every act directly willed is imputable to its author: (2568)

Thus the Lord asked Eve after the sin in the garden: “What is this that you have done?”²⁹ He asked Cain the same question.³⁰ The prophet Nathan questioned David in the same way after he committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and had him murdered.³¹

An action can be indirectly voluntary when it results from negligence regarding something one should have known or done: for example, an accident arising from ignorance of traffic laws.

1737 An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent; for instance, a mother’s exhaustion from tending her sick child. A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed either as an end or as a means of an action, e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger. For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it, as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver. (2263)

This demonstrates the flaw in the defense of things like torture or abortion by appealing to double effect. If the act was willed, or if it was foreseen as a possibility we could avoid by taking the right steps, then we don’t get to claim double effect—we did wrong, either directly, or by being negligent.

Nobody can reasonably blame a person for an accident of course. But torture and abortion and other intrinsically evil acts don’t happen by accident. They happen by a person choosing to take part in it. Once again, we are forbidden to choose an act which the Church decrees is evil, and choosing to do that act is to choose something as higher in importance than God.

Our choice is this: Either we choose God in our actions or we reject God in our actions. When God directly, or through His Church says we must not do an action, then there is never any circumstance or motive that makes it permissible.

Remembering the Fear of the Lord

For they will not mend their ways; 
they have no fear of God. (Psalm 55:20)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
prudent are all who practice it.
His praise endures forever. (Psalm 111:10)

When I witness the anger against the Church and her insisting on teachings, over and over I hear the same thing: "God doesn't care about my doing X! The Church is being unfair!" It isn't surprising. In the West, there is a tendency to turn Jesus into a "nice guy" who doesn't care about what we do as long as we don't hurt anybody else while we do it. After all, they ask, didn't Jesus say to love one another and not to judge?

Basically, Western views of Christianity can be summed up as H. Richard Niebuhr put it:

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross."

In other words, the popular view of Jesus is Christianity stripped of everything which makes it meaningful. He's no different than any other pop guru out there.

But that is not what Jesus had to say to us. He warns us to be holy and to be ready:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me. (Luke 10:16)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’ (Matt 7:21-23)

“If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.  If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. (Matt 18:15-17)

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:18-19)

That's the very opposite of the "Santa Claus" type Jesus people tend to believe in. He is the Way to salvation, but His salvation is not given indifferently. It requires following Him wholeheartedly. It requires fear of The Lord. That scandalizes people . . . especially if they contrast the Old Testament God with the person of Jesus.

Now Fear of the Lord, in the context of the Psalms cited, is not a sort of servile response to a divine argumentum ad baculum from a God who can't wait for you to screw up so He can bash you. 

Fear comes from the word יִרְאַ֬ת  (yir'ah) meaning (in this context): Reverence, Piety, Knowledge (Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, 432).

In other words, if we would be wise and follow God, it requires Reverence to Him (as opposed to presuming that He didn't really mean what He said), Piety (as opposed to thinking a lackluster approach is good enough) and knowledge of His teachings (as opposed to thinking that however I personally interpret what I think the words mean).

Basically, Fear of the Lord can be summed up in the old Catholic saying: Know, Love and Serve God. Know and accept as true what He teaches, follow His teachings out of Love for Him (as opposed to "It's a rule the Church made and I have to do it until they change their mind") and live your life in a way that emphasizes this.

We need to recognize that all too often our passions interfere with knowing, loving and serving God. Either we desire something that we are told is sinful (harmful) for us or we fear losing something if we follow Him. So we "shoot the messenger" and blame the Church . . . as if the Church would invent such strict rules to be odious.

Really, the whole concept of blaming the Church is irrational. If we accept that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be (the Church established by Christ that teaches with His authority), then what she teaches ought to be heeded because she has the authority to bind and loose. But if the Catholic Church is not what she claims to be, then any truth in her teaching is mere coincidence, and it makes no sense to want to remain in her to begin with. (I firmly believe anti-Catholics are wrong and grossly misled, but at least they are more logically consistent in their error than the Catholic dissenter who wants to "change" Church teaching).

Our Western Society has become very foolish. Our society rejects God's commands when people do not want to follow them. Our society will continue being foolish until we realize that we need to turn back to knowing, loving and serving God and not putting our own passions first.