WATCH ME SWALLOW A DEAD RAT

To comment please open your gmail account.

I HATE TO SAY THIS, but once upon a time, Catholic lay people could rely on the pulpit and Catholic press to be fed Catholic doctrine. 

Not any longer. In fact, not for a while now.

I receive monthly reflections on the Gospel from a Catholic Church source I'd rather not name, and although I've raised questions with that source in the past their latest email, which celebrates the Ascension, is just asking to be challenged publicly.

First up: 'Our liturgy is about celebrating what God has done in the world in and through us'. 

Our liturgy is about celebrating what God has done in the world through the sacrifice of his Son and his Resurrection.

Holy Mass is offered for four purposes:
1. To ADORE God as Creator and Preserver.
2. To THANK GOD for all his gifts, both natural and supernatural,
3. To ATONE and IMPLORE PARDON for our countless sins.
4. To PETITION God for grace and mercy for the living and the deceased.

So we see the liturgy is not about us. This 'reflection' shows how much understanding of the Eucharist we've lost in the Novus Ordo ('New Mass').

Next we read: 'We continue to experience the abiding presence of Christ in our daily lives ... 

Isn't this rather a large assumption? In fact, it's presumption. We experience the abiding presence of Christ only by obeying his commandments ("If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love" (Jn 15,10 - my emphasis).

' ... or else we wouldn't be here.' The necessary presence of God which keeps all creatures in existence is confused with the indwelling presence of God, to be found only in people filled with sanctifying grace (see above). If we fall into serious sin we lose that indwelling presence. This reflection, like so many homilies now (especially at Requiem Masses), falls into presumption, which in its persistent denial of sin and its consequences is rampant in the Catholic Church - but not (and this is really galling) in the Protestant churches as I know them, through my friendships with Protestants. friends. 

'May people  ... where women and children are continually violated, experience God’s message of justice, truth and compassion rather than silence and neglect' (emphasis added)._Women and children by the million are continually violated by abortion, but the Catholic Church by and large keeps quiet. The Catholic Church by and large neglects them.

'May the Indigenous people of this country continue to explore their personal histories. ' A religious organization could suggest that living in the sacrament of the present moment is more use to any people, not just indigenous, than dwelling on the past and any injustice, no matter how real. Aren't Christians supposed to put on the mind of Christ? Did Jesus ever moan about the injustice of Israel being ruled by the Romans?

'May we find Jesus in those we have been given to love, particularly in our family, our friends.'

"If you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the tax collectors do the same?" (Mt 5, 46). Jesus gives us everyone to love. 

And finally: 'Let us hear again Christ's call to each of us to move away from the complacency of a spiritual cafeteria to a church moving out to change the world.'

Amen! 

As a coda, I'll add that the 'hero' Edmund Hillary who's eulogized in these Reflections was also a hero to New Zealand's feminist movement in their campaign for the legalization of abortion in New Zealand. 

He's no hero to me.