A Sign of Contradiction or Conformity?

The West in Medieval times was open as never before or after. Christendom allowed for free travel, as the national boundaries, which came to demand passports or travel documents did not yet exist.

This community of cultures and proto-nations, of kingdoms, whose kings and queens acknowledged a King above them, flowed back and forth in confidence and in relationships.

All this changed after the Protestant Revolt, when national identity became stronger and caused new rules between nations, making borders more difficult to transverse and making the Catholic Church just one more “national interest” among many. The many revolutions undermined the supremacy of Christendom, and the Church became not only marginalized, but persecuted, in Germany, England, France, Italy, and other places.

For a brief moment of glory, the Church was given some freedoms under Napoleon, who thought he could control the hierarchy by restoring them, but again, nationhood trumped Christendom. But, Napoleon himself began the counting and ordering of peoples, with the census and the insistence on surnames. He demanded a “global order” in what he saw as disorder. Bismarck followed with similar ideas, and the purposeful stealing of power and influence of the Church continued.

The imprisonment of Pius IX and the taking away of the Vatican Papal States in the supposed reunification of Italy pushed the Church more and more into the sidelines, no longer the universal Church, but one of many, in the false ideals of both nationalism and relativism.

By the 20^th Century, the Church no longer had power in the public square in international affairs, being again sabotaged by the League of Nations and, finally, the United Nations.

By the 21^st Century, the Church had lost all power in many European nations and has been confined to the status of immigrant groupings, not being seen as a world power, despite the media attention of the popes.

The Church will be more and more marginalized concerning international affairs, and is already no longer a power in the EU, having many of Her rights and privileges taken away.

The reason that the Church is now marginalized and facing persecution in most countries, including the United States, is that those who are the shepherds, for the most part, cannot see the rot of Church power in the world, nor do they care. They have no vision of a Church which is not “national”, such as in America, where so many bishops and priests still hold on to the heresy of “Americanism” and hate so-called Vatican control.

There are too many Catholics, including bishops, who do not understand that for the Church to be free, She must have respect as an institution and be above the increasingly immoral and tyrannical laws of the lands. She must be totally independent.

I could give specifics as to how the Church has lost power in the past thirty years. I know some of these from experience and from serious discussions with priests who are willing to discuss how governments are tying the hands of movements of seminarians or priests, or even families of both.The world has changed that quickly, in just over a generation, so that the type of respect given the moral position of the Church has vanished.

No longer do national leaders have to consider the Church. No longer do nations feel they need to provide Ambassadors to the Vatican. No longer do leaders listen to the statements of the popes.

No longer can a bishop exert influence in the secular society in his diocese.

We shall all suffer because of this huge change, but some will suffer more than others.

Cardinals, bishops, priests, seminarians, seminaries, schools which have not capitulated already to state curricula, monasteries of monks, convents of nuns.will be the first to feel the brunt of this marginalization and persecution.

Then, the faithful remnant will feel the pressure and persecution.

I give it less than two years for major changes to the freedom of movement of Catholics in the West, especially the ordained. I give it less than two years for the laity to be impacted by a schism, which will separate the Church instituted by Christ and those national churches, no longer loyal to Rome but pseudo-Catholic like the Anglicans in Great Britain.

The freedom to come and go which the early missionaries enjoyed to convert Europe and then the New World will not be seen again, vanishing in the near future.

In the past, a civilized world did not need passports, or visas, or rules for immigration. These rules are all about control, controlling those who go out, and controlling those who come in. And, which organization sends the most people here and there? Big businesses? No, the Catholic Church.

Ironically, those who want more stringent rules cannot see that they are preparing the way for a world government, which will totally control the movement of free peoples. Nations are keeping out the poor, but also those who are “different”, who seem to be “nonconformists”.

Someone who was trying to hurt me with words today and told me I never fit in, I was also a nonconformist and pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable. This conversation arose because someone in my hometown remembered that I dated a black man in 1969, a Jew in 1979, and (horrors) married an Englishman.

“You were always different”, this person noted, but I was just being myself.

By many standards, I never fit into the mold of what it means to be “American”, but that is because early on, I thought (and still do think), like a Catholic, belonging to the universal Church, not a national Church. Even as a very young person, when asked who I was, I would not answer first, “an American”, but “a Catholic”.

Some of us think and act like “citizens of the world”. We have this perspective because we are Benedictine, Carmelite, Franciscan, the Church Militant. Such a citizen is free from the prejudices and false security of being just a citizen of a nation which may or may not be “under God”.

There is only one institution which is truly “under God” and that is the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.  First and foremost, I am a Catholic.

I am moving out of Iowa next week, a word which means, “the beautiful land”. A friend of mine wondered how it got so liberal, so leftist. She also wondered how Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, parts of the Dakotas (remember, the first and only complete Marxist city council was in a Dakota town), became so leftist. 

The answer is simple. These areas were primarily settled by Protestants, who believed in the American Dream first and foremost. There religion because “Americanism” and conformity. Sola fide, sola Scriptura means one can believe anything, even heresy. This type of attitude of provincial religious and political liberalism rubbed off on the Catholics, so that, by the time I was growing up, most the Catholics voted left in this area, and most practiced birth control, and supported “women’s rights”. I know Catholics who will vote for Hillary. They have no idea of her connections to the international, global groups who want to destroy Catholicism or, at least emaciate the Church. They do not seem to care. Globalism is more important than Christendom.

But, that blindness is only one example of the problem. The real problem is the lack of witness to the Gospel of Christ as preserved in the Catholic Church.

If the laity were signs of contradiction in the world a hundred years ago, they are no longer so.

They are signs of conformity.

The remnant is small, indeed.