A word to priests

On Good Friday we contemplate, among other things, how very alone the Lord was in his suffering.

While many attend services during the Easter celebration, and while many vibrant parishes exist year around, we know that there is a crisis of faith around the globe. In particular westernized countries have seen a drop in church attendance as people seem to start to feel that they "don't need" to go to church to "honor God" or to be 'spiritual,' that good intentions (and even total neutrality) are enough.

I am thinking with particular desire to comfort those priests who look out and see only a handful of parishioners at Mass.

I know that all of you know that there is never a "wasted" Mass, even if you are the only one celebrating Mass and the only person in attendance. I also know, better than you realize, though, how acutely saddening and distressing that it is to think about all those who jeopardize their salvation and, at the very least, their own spiritual comfort and reality, by no longer attending or valuing Mass. So I'd like you to think about the following.

When you celebrate Mass to a near empty church, imagine it filled with the people who would desperately want to attend Mass, if only it were available where they are, in oppressed, impoverished, or under-served parts of the world. Dedicate as personal intentions in your mind that each available seat is offered up for those people.

Also, think of those who would attend if only they believed. Likewise, have faith that if you also dedicate those empty seats as intentions for those of little or no faith, through the Holy Spirit it will do a powerful amount of good, and also be of great comfort to you.

It is my most frequent personal prayer intention, to pray on behalf of those who will not or cannot pray for themselves, and I find it a great comfort and know it to be efficacious (though results are frustratingly slow to see, I know). This is why I had the idea that if priests as personal intentions dedicate their "empty seats" to those who cannot be there or who are yet in denial and refuse to be there, each Mass, indeed, will be very full.

I hope that you have found this to be helpful. In Christ.

Understanding God: Who gets into heaven (4)

Part Four

One of the most important things that you must understand is that Jesus never taught an individual salvation. In other words, the community of the faithful is just as important as the idea of a particular person “going to heaven.” This is one of the greatest misunderstandings among some modern Christians, particularly those in non-denominational churches or with fundamentalist or Evangelical outlooks. So this is another reason that it is problematic to have an attitude of “who” individually is going to go to heaven and be “saved” and who individually is “not.”

An individual view of salvation has never been part of the Old Covenant and Jesus did not endorse such a change in stance, and neither did the Apostles or disciples. The entire Catholic Church is built in continuation of the emphasis on the “body of the faithful” for this reason, not because everyone loves “control” and a “bureaucracy.” So in this post I am going to demonstrate the Biblical basis for the community of the faithful rather than focus on individual salvation. I am not saying that souls will be judged by God as a collective, however, a strictly “individual” view of “salvation” is not what God expects. Further, an individual basis of salvation is a temptation to some sins of omission.

Exodus 19: 2-6
While Israel was encamped here in front of the mountain, Moses went up the mountain to God. Then the Lord called to him and said, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob; tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. That is what you must tell the Israelites.”

1) The Lord has Moses address every single Israelite gathered together in total.
2) The Lord calls them “the house of Jacob,” which is a terminology of a single family unit.
3) The Lord says that if they obey they shall all together be his “special possession” even though God has all the earth and its people to his own.
4) The Lord says that all the Israelites will be “a” as in one “kingdom of priests,” indicating that it is a communal and collective priesthood of people, whether or not an individual is of the priestly tribe or not, and whether one performs a priestly function or not.
5) The Lord says that they will be a “holy nation,” again a collective communal covenant, not individual.

Throughout the Old Testament you can read for yourself that even though Laws address individual behavior, the Laws are given to all the people, and God always refers to the faithful collectively. One other important event that I’ve blogged about often is also underscoring the importance of the community over the individual’s “goodness” or “salvation:”

Isaiah 6:1-7
In the year king Ozia died [742 BC], I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!” they cried one to the other. “All the earth is filled with his glory!” At the sound of that cry the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin is purged.”

1) Isaiah was a high priest serving in the temple, so he was far from being having “unclean lips.”
2) Yet in his astonishment at seeing God in his glory Isaiah forestalls God from even speaking to him!
3) Why? Because Isaiah by virtue of living within a community, a people of “unclean lips” he has guilt of association, even though he is a holy priest about to be called to be God’s greatest prophet since Moses.
4) Did God or the angel reply, “Oh, tut, tut, do not worry Isaiah, for you are individually saved and justified and you do not need to be modest in front of us?” No, they did not. Immediately the angel brought an ember from God’s altar to purify the lips of Isaiah.
5) Further, the angel agrees that to be a righteous PRIEST living among unclean lipped people gives him a “wickedness” and “sin” that had to be “purged.”

Nowhere is it more clear that even being righteous but living within an unclean community/society filled with sin taints if for no other reason sins of omission in addressing the sin even the faithful.

Jesus himself makes this abundantly clear when he relates this story of the poor man Lazarus:

Luke 16:19-31
“There was a certain rich man who used to clothe himself in purple and fine linen, and who feasted every day in splendid fashion. And there was a certain poor man, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. And it came to pass that the poor man died and was borne away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; but the rich man also died and was buried in hell.
“And lifting his eyes, being in torments, he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he creid out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.’

“But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime hast received good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now here he is comforted whereas thou art tormented. And besides all that, between us and you a great gulf is fixed, so that they who wish to pass over from this side to you cannot, and they cannot cross from your side to us.’

“And he said, ‘Then, father, I beseech thee to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they too come into this place of torments.’ And Abraham said to him, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hearken to them.’ But he answered, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hearken to Moses and the Prophets, they will not believe even is someone rises from the dead.’”

1) Notice that the rich man is in hell because he neglected one specific anonymous man, Lazarus, who was a beggar lying dying in front of the rich man’s gate.
2) So the rich man is not in hell because he didn’t believe in God and he probably was even a prominent man among the faith, giving alms to charity of the prescribed times and amounts.
3) The rich man finds himself in hell because rather than being fully in the communal faith of tending to one’s neighbor in the fullest sense of the term, he had a correct and “by the book” faith.
4) Astonished by this he begs Abraham for the chance to warn his five brothers, who are undoubtedly living their prominent and privileged lives as pious and observant men, for he realizes now that being pious and observant and believing but ignoring communal need, especially at one’s front door, results in a trip to hell.
5) Notice that his attitude did not change even in hell because what does he ask? That the poor man Lazarus be the errand boy to either bring him water or to warn his brothers. The rich man does not use his chance to beg for mercy from Abraham, asking for his intervention.
Jesus is making several points when telling the disciples this story and I’ve provided commentary on the various points in previous posts. What you must realize here is that again, the rich man is not in hell because he was a “sinner” who “did not accept God as his personal savior” and even more to the point since his brothers have no clue they risk hell, just like the rich man, they all were undoubtedly believers and observant believers at that. It is not enough to be a believer and it never was enough to be a believer; one must be in the body of the faithful and ready to serve God’s will in all parts of the community in which one lives.

Here are other clues that show you how Jesus maintains the view of the faithful as a “nation of priests” and “the house of Jacob,” as God did during the Old Covenant. You do this by reading two instances where Jesus and the disciples discuss entire cities.

Matthew 11:20-24
Then he began to reproach the towns in which most of his miracles were worked, because they had not repented. “Woe to thee, Corozain! Woe to thee, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been worked the miracles that have been worked in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capharnaum, shall thou be exalted to heaven? Thou shalt be thrust down to hell! For if the miracles had been worked in Sodom that have been worked in thee, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for thee.”

1) Jesus worked many miracles in these towns and he is wrathful not because they didn’t thank him but because they did not use the miracles as a sign to repent.
2) Jesus expects, just as God did in the Old Testament, entire towns to repent and convert, not individuals.
3) Jesus explains and expounds that towns that are sinful but had no advantage of a visit by him and miracles (though he preached to people from Tyre and Sidon, Mark 3:8, so he knew them well and was not discussing them theoretically) will be treated better in their day of judgment than the towns who had received miracles by Jesus.
4) Jesus goes as far as to explain that heaven is an exaltation (a lifting up in position), not something to be “expected”… it is an honor, not the default route for “adequate” observant behavior. Thus Jesus says sinner towns that had no advantage of a visit by Jesus over sinner towns that received miracles from Jesus and perhaps are nominally observant but did not view the miracles as a sign for total repentance and conversion.
5) Jesus compares this situation to when God destroyed the city of Sodom for its sin. Jesus is saying that if he or one of the prophets or angels had performed in Sodom the same miracles that Jesus performed this day in the towns he lists, that the entire city of Sodom would have repented. Sodom was FAR more sinful than these small observant Jewish burgs so you now can see how dismally these towns failed to understand that the gift of the miracles was a call to total conversion, even if they were not raging centers of sin like Sodom was.

Luke 9:51-56
Now it came to pass, when the days had come for him to be taken up, that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before him. And they went and entered a Samaritan town to make ready for him, and they did not receive him, because his face was set for Jerusalem. But when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?’

But he turned and rebuked them, saying, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And they went to another village.

[Note: they refused Jesus entry to their town because the Samaritans believed that their temple on Mount Garizim was the only legitimate place and they were hostile toward anyone going to the temple of Jerusalem to worship].

1) Notice that entire towns and villages received guests, or they did not. The communities act as a whole, so it’s not like Jesus could have entered anyways because one or two good hosts would welcome him while the rest do not. This shows that community mores can sometimes “trump” the presence of individual good people, another reason why God and Jesus both emphasis the body of the faithful rather than the individual. Unfaithful communities can prevent faithful individuals from performing God’s will, and that is a problem if the faithful are in acceptance of this situation.
2) Consistent with the emphasis on community that I am explaining to you, the disciples James and John offer to call upon God to bring fire upon the entire town.
3) Consistent with the emphasis on community, Jesus replies that he is there to save, not destroy. He is still referring to the entire town; otherwise he would have said, we should not destroy the good with the bad. There is no separation of faithful individuals from the community in which they live and, most importantly, prosper (as the rich man who did not even notice Lazarus to help him). Faithful who prosper in unfaithful communities are in a problematic position when they must account to God.
4) Jesus gives the opportunity to host him to another unnamed village. Again, an entire village gains from the loss of the other town in the opportunity to host Jesus.

This continuity of viewpoint of the importance of the entire community is why in the Epistles the Apostles may address letters to individuals but they are always mindful of speaking to the entire body of the faithful. This is also why even heaven where there is no flaw is nonetheless referenced and actually viewed in Revelation as a city, the New Jerusalem. There is a continual emphasis at every level that salvation is not an individual matter, but one inexorably intertwined in the entire community.

So this is another thing you must keep in mind when thinking about “who goes to heaven?” God during the Old Covenant and Jesus in bringing the New Covenant never emphasized individual salvation: individual behavior, yes, individual judgment, yes…. But salvation and being God’s people is also linked to one’s role in the community of the faithful, and that does not mean only one’s fellow church attendees. God and Jesus Christ both demonstrate continuity throughout scripture of the importance of collective repentance, works and salvation within one’s local geographic, not ideologue, community. I cannot too strongly emphasize that the observant rich man went to hell even though he believed and also performed his perfunctory obligations, but missed in saving the poor man Lazarus, who was his community right outside his gate. Being a believer and perfunctory in one’s observance of God is not a guarantee of salvation as defined as being “exalted” to heaven if one has gotten to where one is by benefiting from or ignoring the prevailing sinfulness and inadequacy of one’s geographic community.

[Conclusion of Part Four].

Case study: falling away from the faith

While visiting a Catholic site I've not read for a while, I noticed a comment by someone who wonders why some of the most angry and atheist apologists and attackers of Christianity and the Church are "former evangelicals." The answer to this is somewhat straightforward, so I'll make it a quick case study.

Even when one is a Christian, the farther away that you are in your faith from making God the center of it all, the more you are at risk of losing your perspective, and then your faith. So if you think of faith as being a series of concentric circles, the innermost circle being God himself, if you are in a faith that is in a close circle to God, where your focus is always kept on him, it tends to be a good indicator of future stability of mind. This is true, obviously, if one is Christian, Muslim or Jewish. The more that you view your faith as "being all about God" and not yourself, the better you yourself will actually grow in spirit and in love of human life.

Now, say what you will about the problems of the "hierarchy" of those big bad institutional churches, but there is an advantage to enforced humility. Humans tend to puff themselves up pretty big and fast when they are on their own. This is one reason it is not such a bad thing to belong to a large institutional faith, such as being Catholic, and I also include the highly humble and egalitarian faith of Islam (witness three million people on Haj even as we speak, side by side, rich and poor, all men wearing two white cloths as their clothing). Many hajis (people who have gone on haj) say that remembering that it is all about God and his mercy, and all being equal in his eyes, is the highlight personal illumination of haj. The Catholic Mass is, likewise, a liturgy that is focused entirely on God, as revealed through Jesus Christ, and in the prophets and forefathers and mothers.

Likewise, the institutional churches of the children of the Reformation, such as the various sects, called denominations, of Protestantism, Methodists, Baptists and so forth, also retain this focus on God. Their communal worship within an institutional church helps remind them that it is not all about themselves, but it's all about God, and Jesus Christ, the Savior.

However, when a number of Protestants began to self identify as "Evangelicals," a subtle form of temptation crept in. So long as they remained in the mainstream of the institutionalized denominations, that temptation to increase one's own individual importance, and diminish one's focus on God, is usually kept in check. This is one reason I am a great admirer of Baptists.

But the problem is that many take a worthy objective, to "evangelize" and have done two things. One is that they give themselves a title, merited or not. Suddenly they think of themselves as being "evangelicals," with all due honors and privileges, if you know what I mean. Second, many break away from their denominations and "create their own churches." What exactly is one's "own church?" Whenever a few in the congregation get angry, off they go and "create their own church." Where's God in all this, and God's equal expectations from everyone?

Thus, ironically, when an "evangelical" loses faith for some reason or another, it is not at all surprising that they tumble far and hard, with great anger, often going to the extreme of virulent denial of God himself The reason it is not surprising is that with each step one takes in faith, no matter which faith or denomination you are in, away from God and toward self focus and meeting "your own needs" for "your own church," you are already having one foot in a sticky pit of temptation without even knowing it.

Many people, as an aside, are baffled by the grandeur of the interior of Catholic churches. But one important reason for that is to continue to keep people looking upward toward God, and not mistake that the worship is all about themselves and their "message" "on behalf of God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit." Catholic churches are deliberately designed to appear as two things 1) the sacrificial altar and 2) a glimpse into the sanctuary, which is the gateway to heaven. That sure keeps it focused on God.

When an "evangelical" (or anyone else) starts to subconsciously and then consciously focus on whether or not "his or her church" is "meeting" "his or her needs," you've got a big potential problem of temptation of hubris and the falling away of faith. One has, at that point, already taken a big step away from God, by lowering God in one's own mind and raising one's self up as being the "one who really understands what it is all about." When that evangelical has inch by inch step by step moved farther from God being the center of it all, one day they wake up and feel there is nothing there, and then they lose their faith, they deny, they get angry, and they attack the very people, the remaining faithful, who the evangelical him or herself had "left behind" as being "indoctrinated" or "stupid." It's like running away from home and then denying that a home ever existed. It's exactly like that.

Sometimes you can better understand this drift if you compare it with groups where the drift does not happen, for the most part. Look at Orthodox Jews, for example. You just don't tend to see an Orthodox Jew shake his head and say, "You know, this worship thing really doesn't meet my needs or work for me. I know what God really wants, so I'm going to 'plant' my own synagogue, and we will do in it whatever 'meets our needs.'" Um, you just don't see that. Likewise, look at Muslims. The Sunni and the Shi'a have sometimes bitter disagreement about the spiritual successors to the Prophet (PBUH). But I do not know a single Muslim who would go up the the Grand Mufti and say, "You know, this haj schedule really doesn't work for me and my friends. We are going to start our own haj, but it's going to take place in some month that is not haj." LOL, imagine that. You just would not see it, because all Muslims are proud of the five pillars of their faith, not trying to "edit" them and become "non denominational" in order to "better meet their needs." I also don't know Muslims who run around saying, "You know, parts of the Qur'an really don't work for me, so let's remove those chapters." Sometimes individuals err in the direction of deeply believing but not understanding their own faith, and that is something mainstream Islam is trying to address. But none of them take their eyes off of God above all to "create their own mosque" that "meets their own worship needs."

With every step that one takes from keeping God himself at the very center of one's spiritual and secular life, one is taking one's self farther into an area where one is tempted to think that faith exists in order to "meet your needs" because it is "all about you." That is the shadow, to use a psychological term, of "evangelicals." They feel a great love and vigor of faith, but their unnoticed shadow is that they feel they are interior and individual custodians of the "truth" of their faith, and that is a dangerous slope of inflation and ultimately disappointment, anger, disenfranchising and disbelief.

This, again, is the reason that some are baffled that the Methodist church has an empty cross, with a red cloth draped to signify that Christ has risen, while Catholics have the crucifixion cross, with the corpus of Christ. The people who are baffled think that Catholics are "stuck" on the gory figure of Christ, and not focused on his having resurrected and "left the cross." But to quote St. Paul it is about him, Christ and him crucified. Catholics, even the weak ones, never forget that it is about God through Jesus Christ, and that one must always keep one's gaze on God and on the Savior he sent, that the Savior was crucified and that all must carry one's cross.

Sometimes I worry that my friends the Methodists have a psychology that the Cross is a "completed project." That is one step away from being totally God centric. I'm not bashing, I'm analyzing. Trust me, I grew up among many Methodists and they think they have it figured out, while the Catholic Church has the wrong orientation. Nope. One is never wrong if one is totally focused on God, and Jesus Christ crucified. When one is not "comfortable" with that focus on God and Jesus Christ, crucified, one has to ask, why is it about your "comfort" level, your faith? Again, I'm not criticizing, but I am critiquing, since, after all, I've endured silently decades of being critiqued unjustly, and now I reply.

Again, if one need to understand faith, look at Orthodox Jews. Have they edited their faith in order to be "more comfortable," to eliminate the suffering and anguish in faith history and replace it only with "spreading the good word," and have they people who break away when they quarrel and set up their own "non denominational" "place of worship?" No, because as I've said before, no one comprehends God better than Orthodox scholarly Jews, and it is on God that they keep their focus, where they keep their eyes and ears, and their hearts. People often wonder why God did not charter the Israelites to be "evangelicals," to convert and spread the word. This is exactly why. God understands humans more than you can ever imagine, and he knows that it is hard enough to keep humans faithful and focused on him through the centuries, even, as the Bible demonstrates, a small group of people such were the Israelites. That is part of the miracle, and proof, of the Savior, of Jesus Christ, that humans had reached a point where they can evangelize and still stay focused on God, and not inflate their own personal attributes as "representatives" of God. But see, over time, there is that temptation, and it started in the Reformation.

So that, my anonymous friends and readers, is why we see some who seemed so in love with Jesus Christ that they called themselves "evangelicals," fall so far that they become bitter atheists who are not only against God and denying him, but hating upon the faithful who stay in the fold. Any evangelical or any faithful for that matter who starts to think that spreading God's message as they understand it personally, rather than staying in the institutional church and providing personal witness, is the course that "meets their needs" is already putting their feet on a path that, God forbid, could bring them to crashing into total lack of faith. The Bible explains that if you put your trust in yourself or your fellow human, you will fail. If you put your trust in God, and remain focused on only God, you will not fail. It's as simple as that, really.

Spiritual direction: God and his given religions

Understanding God and his religions

One of humanity’s greatest misunderstanding about belief in the one God and obeying the religion he has founded is that people think religion is an individual event and responsibility. It is not; God’s religion is a community event. This has always been a weakness in logic in humans, to think it is “up to each person,” but it has become distorted beyond recognition in modern times. Before modern times, strong love and allegiance toward one’s family, community, tribe, clan or other social organization ensured the glue that kept the seeking of God and obedience to his religious tenets in a community setting. The first breaking away of realization that God expects and delivers “salvation” (to use an evangelical term) on a community basis came with the Reformation. Not only did the Reformation give birth to the notion that one can break away from the Church institution founded by Jesus Christ and in the true Apostolic lineage, but hundreds of years later the notion arose that people can construct their own denominations. Communal worship became incorrectly transformed into “virtual communities” as people collect together according to what pastor or church “they select.” So this is one example of the splintering of true human communities of worship into artificial cohesions of people who “shop at the same faith store.” I don’t mean this to disparage individual faith or goodness of intention. But clarity of vision is sometimes unpleasant feeling, and so you have to be a bit uncomfortable in order to see the truth. Just to point out a further extension of the Reformation children’s breakdown of natural collective worshiping communities and their replacement with “choice” based virtual communities, within this devolution was the notion that the individual is responsible for finding “the right church” and that salvation is “individual based.” This is the exact opposite of God’s intention regarding how he gave religion to humans and how they should view it. Religion is not “one person’s search for making themselves “OK” with God, and doing so with like minded individuals who find each other shopping at the same faith store.” And so you find post Reformation children sneering at traditional Catholics who “let the Church ‘tell them what to do’ when it ought to be ‘between the individual and God.’” Um, no, if you read the Bible you see that the religion that God gave the children of Abraham is never “just between the individual and his or her conscience and God.” There is absolutely no Biblical justification for the “individual searching for the ‘right’ religion and ‘truth’” delusion that many live under today.

In the Jewish faith you see the same problem, only this time instead of the Reformation it was the destruction of the Temple, the Diaspora and secular pressures that resulted of division of worship from one community to roughly three: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Again, because of social pressures and the belief that “it’s up to the individual” the community worship disintegrated. Some reform rabbis have gone so far as to even meddle in Catholic dogma by “hosting” profane “ordinations” outside of the Church. I mention this because I guess Reform rabbis don’t find enough to do to worship God in their own faith that they have to muck about in someone else’s. This is why I’ve always had an affinity for the Orthodox. Even if I disagree with their politics they have never once forgotten that faith as mandated by God is a community event that is focused on God and his expectations, not “what each individual feels ‘called’ to do.” So you see in the unrecognizable extremes of the three broad parts of Jewish faith that one end clings correctly to understanding that communal values as dictated by God comes first, while the opposite end is “do your own thing.” Again, I do not question individuals’ theoretical love of God. But as in any love relationship, its trueness and purity is ascertained by asking the question, “Do you put the beloved first in importance?” Individuals and congregations that do not put God first, putting him behind social pressures and individual “conscience” cannot really say that they love God as much as the person who puts their worship of God and obedience to his will, even when they don’t understand it, first and foremost.

Islam too had to deal with a fragmentation crisis, but this is much different from the rejection of the community embodiment of faith as God has dictated. Islam’s fragmentation did not come from the secular influences of “do your own thing within your ‘conscience,’” but rather from legitimate cultural confusion regarding the successors to the Prophet (PBUH). Unlike the post Reformation Christians and the liberal wing of the Jewish faith, it never has and it never will occur to Muslims to start thinking of their faith as “individual and conscience based” and to abandon the community embodiment. Instead Islam split into legitimate community bodies based on tribal, familial and ancestral interpretation of how to be part of the lineage of the Prophet’s successors. Islam maintains the community worship cohesiveness that God has demanded of all the faiths, but it does so along several separate lineages. These were not resulting from “secular” pressures or the “rational rise of the individual,” but from understandable difference in interpretation of how to maintain consistent lineage from the familial and spiritual descendents of the Prophet and his companions. So you would never see a mosque being built that is a “non denominational mosque” or a “mega-mosque” or a “liberal mosque,” in either branch of Islam. This is not because Islam is “stuck in the past and won’t modernize” but because they are correctly faithful to the understanding that worship of God must be communal in the tradition sense of community, not artificial or “virtual” communities based on “shopping preference.”

And so that brings us to “cafeteria Catholics.” We have the traditional and true Catholics and we have a huge dose of “cafeteria” or “liberal” “Catholics.” Now, I want to exclude from this discussion Catholics who are earnest with the Church but struggle in good faith within themselves regarding a teaching such as birth control. I am not speaking about them at all in this explanation and critique. Rather, I am speaking about those who want to break apart the faith from within for exactly the same reasons as the Reformation children did, although they may deny it. Gosh, I wish that nuns and others who feel that way would just leave. I really do. Their continued presence within the Church is just not worth their “good deeds” and “devotion.” The moment that they took off their habits for their own “comfort,” they put God aside in second place. We don’t need them and I wish they would go to the nearest “non denominational” church and become their cross to bear! Boy, would the non-denominationals earn brownie points with God if they took liberal “Catholics,” especially those from the religious orders off us Catholics’ hands. So the busy bee nuns who ruin the faith and still claim they “want to be priests,” do God a big fat favor and leave the Church and go worship him with a non-denominational. I mean, they are all “equal” and “fair,” right? I am not joking. Do us all a favor and leave. You ruin the community of the Church that is already challenged by societal and geographic pressures. But be smart and do not keep adding that sin of pride and sabotage to your hands: do the right thing and LEAVE.

The Catholic Church with the traditionalists in her body, remain faithful to the concept of God’s worship as community, even as it struggles with secular pressures and deliberate attack by those who feel they represent either “fairness” or the Enemy (and they are hard to tell apart since the outcome of their deeds is so similar). But the traditionalists demonstrate over and over that the Catholic Church maintains its communal aspirations of faith just as God has demanded, and as articulated by Jesus Christ. For example, Churches do close down in urban areas, and it grieves me to see this even more than it grieves all of you, trust me. Remember, those are buildings that held the sacred Presence of Jesus Christ, they weren’t just Christian after school activity buildings with a basketball hoop. Whenever a Catholic Church closes, you know what it feels like to me? That a cemetery full of loved ones is bulldozer over to “make way for ‘progress.’” But my consolation is that the community of Catholics has moved, whether it be to the suburbs, or to the Southern USA, for example, and a new Church will arise there. But do not forget that every Church closing to me is the shuttering of the place that once held the sacred Presence of Jesus. However, I will not accept it staying open if the price is that people who undermine the faith from within continue to use it. I don’t want guitar playing “womyn priests” dancing around their “sacred cauldron” because “hey, you need us because you are low on vocations.” No, I don’t need you. Shut down the Church and go to your local non-denomination and lord it over them. Don't tell me "it's your church too." It's not. If you reject it and sabotage it from within, obviously it's not "your" church. So find one that is and beat it, and do everyone else a genuine favor.

So whenever a Catholic Church closes down, as painful as it is, it is still a legitimate consequence of reality of community faith. If there is not enough of the traditional community left in the area, then the Church must close down and resources be pooled at the next highest and dispersed level of community worship. And if the traditional faithful must leave, due to migration, job pressures and societal relocation, then they will open a new Church within their community. And wherever they are they can look to Rome, to the heir of St. Peter, for the true global Church community. You see examples of this in Muslim countries, where they have come to recognize that with immigrant workers comes a mobile, dislocated Catholic, and other Christians, community that must have places to worship. It is the Islamic faithfulness to God in their understanding that worship of God is communal that has helped them to be generous to recognize that Christians need facilities even in Muslim countries, for they cannot, as the Muslims themselves do not do, worship individually in back rooms of their apartments. So here you will see migrant workers, such as Pilipinoes and Indians, come together in formation of a local Christian community. These migrant workers are not “picking and choosing” to “select the place of worship” that “best suits their individual ‘needs’ and ‘conscience.’” They are creating new communities by virtue of their being Christian, and needing new churches to satisfy that need. They aren’t flipping through the yellow pages in order to go to the place that they are “most comfortable with” because it’s a “fair place” and “matches my needs.” They are pilgrims who bring the need for their church with them upon their backs. They are the ones who understand God’s gift to them of community based worship, not cafeteria or non-denominational personality based and demand free “individual choice.”

And now I must say something that I do not enjoy, but I do not want to be accused of neglecting the validity of the faith of others. I have always been fond of the Dali Lama as a person, and as a spiritual personage. But I cannot relate to a religious leader who left his one and only faith community behind. It’s not like Tibetan Buddhists are misnamed Global Buddhists. When Tibet was claimed by China, the body of the faithful who in my Abrahamic view of religion needed their leader to stay. It is not like during the capture of Israel by the Babylonians that the Jewish priests cut and run. The Jewish priests went along into captivity with their people. I mention this example because there you have one body, one community of faithful, with one leadership, exactly as the situation was in Tibet. It’s not like he moved “his flag from one command ship to the other.” Now, I read his books and I understand that he was a young man and pressured to flee. But once one is older, and one sees that one’s people are left behind, why does one not return to them, if one truly believes their faith and destiny? Celebrities and the secular politics latched onto him, and I mourned that, for that demarked the end of the legitimate community of worship. And of course, in the Catholic faith, the cardinals wear red for a reason.

I hope that you all, especially the young people, who, like Pope John Paul II, are always on my mind, find this useful, although perhaps a cross to bear in understanding. God never intended his word, his instructions and his institutions to be reduced to what one individual “evaluates” that he or she is “most comfortable with” or finds the “fairest.” To help, here is an analogy.
Suppose that God gave humans a set of blueprints for their individual homes that were absolutely fail proof. If one followed the instructions and built the three bedrooms, two bath all mod con home exactly according to instructions it would last a lifetime, be safe, affordable and easy to maintain, withstanding even harsh weather. So for several thousand years family after family built their houses and passed the blueprint from God on to their children.

Now, we have the “Do your own thing” generation that thinks it is demonstrated its wisdom by rejecting what the old folks say (and having a few puffs on weed while they are at it). They say, “Why should we believe that these blueprints are ‘the best?’” Should we not shop for “options?” So many of them do not use the blueprints at all. Others make “modifications” that “correct stupid mistakes.” For example, they take out the cellar because “Who needs a cellar?” And then they do not understand when the old folks tell them that in a tornado, to go into the storm shelter in the cellar. Huh? Others decide that “aliens” are “filled with wisdom” and are “channeling advanced and spiritual blueprints” and they either build houses based on that, or they endlessly doodle what they think they are hearing from “aliens,” or they live in traditional houses paid for by gulliable people who buy their books containing “alien blueprints.”

Eventually an entirely obsessive compulsive generation of home builders arises. They follow the blueprints given by God to their parents but with one exception. They spend a day building a wall, and the next day they knock down that wall. The day after that they raise the wall again, and then the day after that they knock that wall down again. And the next day they build a second wall, because it’s “the right time” to build that particular wall, and then the day after that they tear down that wall again.

That is what happens when a generation does not understand that true wisdom is accumulated and handed down, and that the body of information is not meant to be “reinvented” over and over again. That’s almost as stupid as if someone declared that it is passé to breathe oxygen, and from now on the truly enlightened will only breathe hydrogen. I mean, belief in breathing oxygen is so old fashioned and oppressive. Who is God or our ancestors to tell us to breathe oxygen? That is what it is like to deny fundamental truths and fundamental healthy community of worship as given to humans by God and God alone. These people will tell you that the “blueprint drawers” were “oppressed” and that is why they have “three bedrooms” because in the “patriarchal bourgeois society of the past the women were forced to be demeaned” and that this shows that God and the blueprints from him are “mistranslated” or the “rest of societal oppression.”

I may seem that I’ve strayed from the original point but I have not at all. There is an arrogant affectation that will result in the end of humanity that arises from the modern notion that “individuals decide what is best for them” and that only old pagan beliefs are good, while old truths that God has taught are “bad or at least questionable.” They ignore saints who were pagans, who were intellectuals, like St. Justin, who looked at pagan and Christian dogma side by side and chose Christianity, recognizing the truth of it. But today, many of the middle aged and older people grew up with a belief that “if it is old it is good, unless it is Christianity.” I’m hopeful and very prayerful that the younger people are beginning to see the error in logic of their parents. Why are “runes” so enlightening while the Bible is not? Who cares what the Pharaohs thought, because they are dead now aren’t they? I mean, if they were such geniuses and so holy and smart, where are they now? Hmm. Who is there instead? The children of the true Abrahamic faiths: Muslims and Christians. But your parents’ generation, dear children, because they wanted to be self proclaimed priests and priestesses, glommed onto anything old and rotten so that they could have libertine lifestyles and call themselves “special” and “enlightened.” And as a result, young people, they are teaching you out of textbooks of rotten skulls and cat box dung.

No one knows humans better than God, obviously, because he knows everything, he created humans, and he knows everything they do and what they will choose to do in the future. Yet God did two things because he loves humans. He gave them free will to make their own decisions, and he gave them the safest and most joyous blueprints possible, knowing what they need to live, thrive, and hopefully, choose to find Him and be saved. What have your parents given you? Have they passed on to you the blueprints that they received from God through their parents? Or have they passed onto you something else? Think about it.

God bless those who seek and find.