Confusion In The Ranks of the Catholic Laity

 

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “You shouldn’t be surprised because anti-Catholic bigotry is the only remaining bigot sport that is allowed to be played, has cheerleaders, has entire organizations dedicated to the preservation of the game, has millions upon millions if not tens of millions of adherents and promoters.  It’s fun bashing Catholics.  We’re easy prey.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Patrick in Rochester, New York is first up today here on the Mike Church Show on the Crusade Channel, part of the Veritas Radio Network, radio the way it should be, even during Thanksgiving week when no one is working, no one is doing anything, no one is even up.  What are you doing up, Patrick?

Caller Patrick:  Work.  I work as a sign language interpreter at a university in Rochester, the frozen tundra.

Mike:  Is it frozen already?

Caller Patrick:  It’s cold right now.

Mike:  Is it frozen already?

Caller Patrick:  Yeah.  We got about ten inches of snow in this area.  I only had about four at my house.  I live out in the country, south of the city.

Mike:  It’s the Green Bay Packers versus the Dallas Cowboys on the frozen tundra at Lambeau Field.

Caller Patrick:  The difference is that Green Bay [unintelligible].  We’re about an hour from Buffalo –

Mike:  Wait a minute, wait a minute.  Just ‘cause you guys lost five Super Bowls, you can’t say you haven’t been.

Caller Patrick:  Four Super Bowls.

Mike:  Forgive me.  I exaggerate just a tad sometimes.

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Caller Patrick:  I just wanted to say, I was quite disturbed yesterday afternoon.  Yesterday I was off from work because they had closed the school down.  I think they might be changing the name of Facebook to Catholic Bashing Book.

Mike:  I just call it Pridebook because when you feel like it’s doing that, it’s just Pridebook.  It is an integral part if not the integral part of the judgment pornosphere, as I call it.

Caller Patrick:  I attend an Anglican Church; my wife attends a Catholic Church.  They’re actually kitty-corner to each other.  I attend Eucharist on Saturday nights so I can take communion.  I attend church on Sunday mornings with my wife and children, because I want my children to see me attending church with them as well.  The sheer bashing yesterday of people: This is my body.  Nobody can say that I have to ask for forgiveness for my health choices.

Mike:  The abortion thing.

Caller Patrick:  Right.  I think it’s absolutely disgusting.  The simple fact is, none of these people are going to be [unintelligible] Catholic.  I guarantee most of them are not.  I hope I’m not placing any kind of disparity on the people, but [unintelligible].  If you don’t agree, just be quiet about it and just respect the fact that these people are living the live they want to.  With my wife, I defer a lot of things to her faith.  She doesn’t believe in contraception; we don’t use contraception.  She wants to raise our children to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, and I have no problem with that because I know that’s important to her.  The pride and arrogance of people to attack the Catholic Church I find sad.

Mike:  You shouldn’t be surprised because anti-Catholic bigotry is the only remaining bigot sport that is allowed to be played, has cheerleaders, has entire organizations dedicated to the preservation of the game, has millions upon millions if not tens of millions of adherents and promoters.  It’s fun bashing Catholics.  We’re easy prey.  I think like Joseph Pearce says, when you see this, or when you are the subject of it, or when you hear it or see it directed at someone else, you should know that whoever that is directed at – when it’s on Pridebook and it’s directed ubiquitously or abstractly at everyone, it is a blanket cause or a complete cause for celebration.  As our Lord told the apostles: If you follow me, they’re going to come after you.  That’s the way it’s going to happen.  If you do what I told you to do as the son of man – I don’t know the verse verbatim – as the son of man will be persecuted will be, so too shall you.  You shall wear it as a – again, I’m paraphrasing.  Save your hate mail.  I’m not trying to mislead anyone – as a crown of glory.  I view those things as positive developments, Patrick.  I think that’s how we ought to look at it.  We’re part of the church militant.  Your wife and I and you, it sounds like, are part of the church militant.  We’re in the military in the never-ending slog against evil.

Caller Patrick:  The reason I still attend Anglican Church is that it’s family.  My great grandfather was one of the people that helped found it.  The family line has gone through it.  For me, I find beauty in the service.  Until the last year or two, the church services were very similar.  I find it disheartening sometimes with our own Catholic diocese that sometimes I feel like when I’m in the Anglican Church it’s more Catholic in some ways in service because the bishop we have now for the diocese is so left-wing on so many issues.  I’m not trying to bash him.  I find a lot of beauty in the Catholic Church as well.  I do take a lot out of the services.  When they go up to take communion, I find it peaceful that I can sit there and pray that someday maybe the churches can be back in full union, which is something I pray for.

Mike:  I think they’re really close now.  As a matter of fact, in Houston – you’re an Anglican.  You must know this story.  The Anglican diocese in Houston basically is now a Fraternal Society of Saint Peter diocese, I believe.  They’re not conducting Anglican services there anymore; they’re conducting traditional Latin Mass services, I believe.

Caller Patrick:  What’s going on with a lot of the Episcopalian and Anglican churches [unintelligible] they sold their souls to try to attract as many people as possible and not make anybody angry.  It’s almost Unitarian in some ways.  There’s a thing called the Anglo-Catholic movement, which is seeing a lot of the more conservative High Mass-style churches are seeking communion with Rome in recognizing the Pope as the head of the Church.  They’re still retaining things like married priests and keeping the service the same.  There’s no difference in service, it’s just now they’re recognizing – we don’t really recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as the same role as the Pope, but saying that the Pope is the leader of the Church.  The movement is building.  I believe they probably will end up consuming most of the churches in the country.

Mike:  At the end of yesterday’s program I read an excerpt from Ms. Hilary White’s essay about Norcia that she had posted at TheRemnant.com.  Did you hear that?

Caller Patrick:  No.  I was home with my kids yesterday.  They’re four and three.

Mike:  No excuses.  I’ll give you a paragraph of it because I was very inspired by what Ms. White wrote.

[reading]

What will happen to Norcia? Someone has asked whether there is any point in rebuilding its now ruined churches, since the people of the town have demonstrated their lack of interest in the religion for which they are intended. Perhaps a better question to ask is “What must happen? What must we do?”

The only answer to that is obvious: we must re-evangelize this country, and every other. We must look to the deep past; how were countries Christianized to begin with? The answer is uncomfortable, to say the least. And given our current circumstances in Rome we cannot look to the usual channels to help with this. Indeed, we are seeing that, as in the days of the Old Empire, Rome is again more a source of persecution of the Faith than of strength and support. I expect that this will get much worse before it gets better.

[end reading]

Caller Patrick:  Absolutely.  That’s why I carry my rosary beads with me everywhere I go, because you never know when you’re going to need them.

Mike:  I think her point is that there is so much confusion in the ranks of the Catholic laity today thanks to the actions and sometimes the inexplicable actions – as a matter of fact, you may want to make sure you’ve got a babysitter for the last hour of the program today because I have Christopher Ferrara coming on to help try explain some of this – the inexplicable actions of Pope Francis.  It’s a challenge, it really is.  You can look at this one of two ways.  You can say: I live in the worst time and the Church stinks and we’ve got all this apostasy and irreverence and all this stuff flying around.  I wish I lived in an age of faith.  I wish I lived when everyone was devout.  You can look at it that way.  Or you can look and say: Maybe some of us are being provided the opportunity to show others what an age of faith lived might look like.  I flatter myself that I would include myself in that number.  Since many of you will include me in that number whether I like it or not, I’ll just go ahead and throw my hat in the ring and say I’m in.  How about you, Patrick?

Caller Patrick:  Absolutely.  I don’t want to flatter you too much and make you blush, but [unintelligible] it makes me reevaluate how I conduct my life.  I try to live my life a little bit better every day.  I think you’re a positive role model in what you read and what you present over the Veritas Radio Network.  It’s a message that you’re not getting anywhere else.  You’re not getting it from Rush or Sean Hannity or any of the other 15-minute-segment news guys.  You delve deeper into these issues.  You make contemplate on what their life is about.  I do thank you for that.  I have learned a lot over the last year, and the last eight or nine years I’ve listened to you over on the old station in the old country.

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Mike:  I would hope, again, someday we will be asked to return in some capacity to a spot on the old station in the old country, but it’s not necessary.  This is from Ross Douthat in Sunday’s New York Times kind of on this subject, just one paragraph:

[reading]

Thus it may not be enough for today’s liberalism, confronting both a right-wing nationalism and its own internal contradictions, to deal with identity politics’ political weaknesses by becoming more populist and less politically correct. Both of these would be desirable changes, but they would leave many human needs unmet. For those, a deeper vision than mere liberalism is still required – something like “for God and home and country,” as reactionary as that phrase may sound.

It is reactionary, but then it is precisely older, foundational things that today’s liberalism has lost. Until it finds them again, it will face tribalism within its coalition and Trumpism from without, and it will struggle to tame either.

[end reading]

Mike:  Douthat is writing about the hissy fit that is being thrown by so many on the college campuses out there.  Then we have this from William Doino at FirstThings.com today, again the closing paragraph.  I won’t bore you with the rest, although I will later in the show.

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[reading]

In all the talk about where history is supposedly headed, there have been few references, at least among secularists, to the person most relevant to this discussion: Jesus Christ. One would never know, listening to our most revered talking heads, where transcendent history is moving, and that long after this world brings down its curtains, and politics passes like a meteor in the night, we will all meet our Maker in a far different dimension.

Secular commentators may not realize it yet, even after this momentous election, but they’ve lost control of history, and the only way to recover is to adopt a more spiritual outlook, and devote their lives to the true Lord of history, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

[end reading]

Mike:  How you like that?

End Mike Church Show Transcript