So many sins and heresies today are framed as an acceptance of something.  People will say, “I accept” a certain faith or I accept a scientific theory. But heresies and other fundamental falsehoods are really just rejections.  We should always see them for what they are and never let enemies of truth control our language.

Every false faith or corridor of thinking is founded upon a rejection.  Look for example:

Satan

Satan rejects God.

Jews

Jews reject Christ.  Many, particularly in our Church today give the impression that Jews of today simply practice the old faith of King David and the prophets, but those men are Catholic saints today.  The Church is the faith of Abraham regardless of whether many Jews rejected it.  Not only is the modern Jewish faith something quite different than in Jesus’ day but it is set against the Messiah himself.

Modern Catholics must learn to understand and integrate the more ancient parts of Faith and not lose what Our Lord Himself honored and embraced, nor must we equate it with modern Talmudic Judaism.

Muslims

Islam reject Christ’s divinity. It is the unfortunate child of ancient Gnosticism which used to plague the Christian lands now destroyed by terrorism.

Protestants

Protestants reject Christ’s Church. They deny her authority and because of this they have no unity or firm doctrines with each person believing differently.  To the extent that they believe in the truth it is consistent with the Church and through the grace of God.  Since they reject the Church, they also reject her saving graces and Sacraments, and the mystical union of Christ’s Church in Heaven.

Vatican II Catholics

Vatican II Catholics reject the past.  A Vatican II Catholic is someone who lets a contemporary idea or teaching trump some true teaching from before our era.  The Vatican II event is a good milestone since it ushered in a wave of heresies in the minds of Catholics, essentially cutting off the branch from the root so the leaves withered and fell.  Vatican II era Catholics make up a new church of their own which is essentially morbid, like the other Protestant professions, to the extent that it rejects the Church of the past; the living root.

Gay Lifestyle People

Gay people reject sexes.  Men and women who live and identify as gay reject the opposite sex and in so doing reject their own.  A gay man rejects loving a woman and by doing so rejects his own manhood.  A gay woman rejects loving a man and that way also rejects who she is as a woman.  Sexes truly are complimentary.  We bring things and see things differently from each other. Together we are much more than just two.

For gay identity people it’s about more than acting on an inclination, and it’s not about loving acceptance, affection, devotion or friendship either because all those things are part of marriage too.  It’s what’s omitted that matters.

The gay lifestyle requires a kind of contempt or indifference for your own sex as well as the opposite.  That’s why so many gay people awkwardly assume the mannerisms of the opposite sex, consciously suppressing their own.  Not only do they reject loving the opposite sex, but they are uncomfortable being the sex that they are.

Divorcing/Remarried People

People who divorce spouses or remarry reject their family.  A family is a structure cemented by fidelity of spouses.  This is a human type for the Holy Trinity.  It’s essential to our highest natures to have a permanent family.  Rejection of family through rejection of fidelity to one’s spouse deprives the family of it’s access, understanding of God’s love and Heaven.

Communists/Statists

Statists reject God’s commands.  The statist world is like ancient Egypt.  A free world is where Moses led.  Can you think of one of the Ten Commandments which isn’t rejected by the atheist, Leftist machine?  Do they honor God or the Church? Do they believe in family? Are they truthful about their agenda?  Do they believe in property rights or in stealing?  Are they content to let people achieve and own their accomplishments or do they cultivate envy and resentment?  Do they regulate what you do with what’s yours, what you say, who you hire, what you buy? Do they honor chastity?  Do they respect life?

Statists reject the Ten Commandments, the natural law.  To lend power or credibility to statists you must first produce an excuse because to support them is to help sin itself.

***

In the end to accept or honor what’s false or wrong is to lose ground.  It’s not about judging or being unmerciful.  It’s about going backwards as a group.  To follow Christ we must also lead others in the right direction. If they won’t follow Christ, perhaps they’ll follow you in His direction.  That will never happen if you just keep chasing them, hoping they’ll turn around when they see how much you ‘care.’

To stray from the Faith is always a rejection.  There’s nothing to accept about it.

 

This weekend I took a break from looking twice at things Pope Francis says.  Not that I stopped thinking, but I was enjoying a bit of a respite and the Pope was making it easy for me.

For instance he said that he was expecting a short papacy, that he misses being anonymous, that he used to be a ‘rover’ in Buenos Aires, and that he’d like to head out for a pizza once again.  Now, my mind said this Pope is too political and too aligned with the wrong centers of power to just assume he’s speaking from the heart, but then again, “Why not?”

He also said that he’d like to come to the U.S. via Mexico, but he couldn’t go there without seeing ‘La Senora’, Our Lady of Guadalupe.  He bragged, I thought characteristically, about his ‘inner peace,’ but he said he gained it by saying three Rosaries a day. The Pope has never been shy about his Marion devotions.  He doesn’t even add in John Paul’s awkward newfangled fourth mysteries!  I found that encouraging.  These aging hippies had their hearts in the right place.  They weren’t wrong so much about the problems, just their solutions…good intentions and all that.

It would be so nice and I want so much to have a Pope who acts Catholic, who has the right goals just different methods, yes?  More than a wish, it’s a desire for so many of us.  Still, I knew this really just had to be a brief break; that if you ever hoped to understand Pope Francis, you couldn’t let yourself become distracted by the faithful things he says.  After all, heresy is only some part poison.  It’s not all bad, except of course it is all bad when you see it over time.

While I was taking this respite, the faithful press was taking apart the new Jubilee Year of Mercy in a big way.  They’d heard enough about FrancisMercy last year, and Cardinal Luis Tagle did a pretty good job squeezing every drop you could squeeze out of that lemon last week in London.

Didn’t we just have a jubilee year?  Why do we have to do everything again all at once?  Laurence England, keen chronicler of The Pontificate for Thugs,  isn’t feeling all the Mercy.

A Jubilee of Mercy sounds wonderful. In previous pontificates I would be very happy about it. But this is no ordinary time.

Was this Cardinal Baldisseri’s idea? Cardinal Kasper’s clever idea? After all, he’s the expert on mercy, isn’t he?

I can only speak for myself. I have had two years of this strange ‘mercy nullifies God’s law, so there’ weirdness streaming from the Vatican. That’s two years in which my cynicism has matured.

Remember Pope Francis has very little ‘mercy’ for faithful Catholics.  In fact, in this new Jubilee Year of Mercy, I think we should prepare to be swamped with contempt.

Faithful Catholics don’t – won’t – say “hurrah” to what amounts to a blanket betrayal by the Hierarchy of Christ’s own teaching by distributing communion to unrepentant adulterers and other unrepentant sinners in mortal sin. They won’t say “huzzah” to treating the Holy Eucharist as if it were unchanged bread and wine, so now we are going to be made to feel really guilty to the point of pariah status for resisting the cunning plan made apparent by the manipulation at the Synod by the even more shrewd institution of a Jubilee Year of Mercy.

“You can’t disagree with us on Kasper’s proposal. It’s the Year of Mercy, don’t you know! And – and – he wrote a book about mercy! So there! If you don’t go along with this, you’re unmerciful!”

As I say, I’ve become quite cynical but I am sure that others feel the same. My good faith in this pontificate with its peculiar ‘agenda’ has been exhausted. I now expect the worst. It is bizarre that suddenly, when it suits the Pope, a Church custom venerated by his predecessors – a custom of incredibly ancient origins, origins that precede even the Traditional Latin Mass he has publicly dismissed – is suddenly seen as a positive – rather than a negative. The cynic might say that this is because, suddenly, an ancient custom suits a personal ‘agenda’.

Still, a Year of Mercy. Let’s go with that. Traditionally, according to Wikipedia a Jubilee is a year ‘in which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest’.

So…how about lifting all those restrictions on the Franciscans of the Immaculate? No? In a Jubilee Year of Mercy, how about teaching the Faithful and others the Truth through proper catechesis so that we may be convicted of our sins and seek Divine mercy? How about granting the Sacraments to German Catholics of good faith and good will even ifthey haven’t paid their Church Tax? How about a cessation of all insults and a hostile atmosphere of recrimination directed at faithful Cardinals, Bishops and priests whose only crime is to wish to hold fast to the Magisterium and promote traditional liturgy?

All this new FrancisMercy is starting to sound a lot like that thing faithful Catholics who work for American schools are feeling this week, like the mercy Patricia Januzzi is getting from her principle for defending the Faith in her free time, or the intense mercy they’re giving to San Francisco Abp. Cordileone. 

If, after all this, like me your Francis respite is broken and you’re feeling less than jubilant, Archbishop Rino Fisichella has been assigned to help you celebrate.

Mercy in our Church today, in the Time of Mercy, and now in the Year of Mercy, requires many hands, or fists.