Eire is a strange place these days, The vast majority of the people do not care about religion or even the afterlife. They missed the big movements of the last forty years regarding the erosion of Truth in the Church and in society, Just as the United States has turned the corner, and the Church has turned the corner, Eire has changed. One cannot help but see that there are two churches which call themselves Catholic, just as
there is a large ex-democracy calling itself a Republic, which is really a socialist state where individuals increasingly lose personal power and rights. How does a Republic end and become a tyranny? Apathy. Complacency. Deceit in the heart and in the mind, and in the soul move one quickly away from God.
Most people cannot face the two churches. Most people do not want to talk to the sons and daughters who have fallen away by going to liberal parishes where priests in the Confessional still say contraception or homosexual relationships are o.k.
They make excuses and vote accordingly. The classes on theology which allow discussion of universal salvation as a reality or women priests as just a matter of time still proliferate and the major retreat centres offer new age spirituality condemned by Rome.. Seminarians hear heresy in the classrooms and if a lay person in academia stands up to authority regarding pro-life issues for example, one is expendable. One cannot be openly pro-life in some universities and survive.
What I find in Eire is this persistence of living in the past. One woman, who is not married and will not marry, told me that too many men live in the past. She wants to live in the now and look towards the future. She wants to be holy, not complacent. She wants to face reality and not go on saying "We are an island of saints."
No, Eire is not an island of saints nor has it been for a long, long time.
This head-in-the-sand attitude makes it comfortable to be a Catholic without really being one. But, here is the really interesting point.
The fall-out is not new. It is merely, now obvious. I have quit being shocked by traditional Catholics who support pro-abortion parties just because they always did, or young people who are afraid to stand outside the abortion counselling centres because of the fear of confrontation, or worse, a false sense of compassion. Bad decisions are made daily because of cowardice. I wrote about this in the early part of the year--there are no real fighting Irish. What has caused the young to give up courage, at an age when courage should be one of the major forces for good in the young soul is a mystery. People just want to get along, I guess.
The overwhelming feeling I get is similar to one I feel when I read about the complacency of the Germans and Austrians regarding the Holocaust. Many years ago, I read
Hitler's Willing Executioners.
Here is an excerpt. Just replace babies for Jews, or Catholics for Jews.
Judges and members of the legal profession were so eager to purge their institutions and their country of Jewish influence that they, beginning already in the first few months of Nazi governance, often outran the legal mandates that the regime promulgated. In October 1933, one Berlin court upheld the dismissal of a Jew from administering an estate, ruling that the people’s pervasive hatred of Jews “made it seem inadvisable to retain a Jew in office, even in the absence of a special law to this effect.” Earlier that year, in July, another Berlin court provided a more sweeping justification for judges taking such initiative in the battle against Jewry. According to Die Juristische Wochenschrift, the most important German legal periodical, the court, writing with obvious approval, pointed out “that a revolutionary legislature [the Nazis had been in office but six months] naturally leaves loopholes which ought to be filled by the Court in applying the principles of the National Socialist Weltanschauung.” The German judiciary – almost all of whom had taken the bench during Weimar and therefore were, at least formally, not “Nazi judges” —was composed of such ardent racial antisemites that leading Nazis (bound to the belief that the eliminationist program should be legally governed) chastised judges for having violated the law in their rampant eliminationist ardor. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick similarly tried to rein in all those under his jurisdiction, including many holdovers from Weimar, from extending the eliminationist measures beyond the laws that the regime had made. The judiciary’s extensive contribution to the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi period reveals its members to have been zealous implementers and initiators of eliminationist measures. The judges composed a group that was obviously bristling with anti-Jewish hatred during Wiemar, and then, when Hitler took power, was freed to act upon these beliefs.
Have we forgotten that Hitler was elected?
Hatred and intolerance of religion do not happen overnight. That the media here is so anti-Catholic is merely a symptom of what is already discussed in homes, schools, college dorms, pubs. The real Catholic issues are overlooked by priests and politicians alike and this is merely a symptom of the greater problem of selling out to EU socialism and practical atheism. When I bring this up, people are astounded when I say the Church has always condemned socialism and they defend socialism anyway, refusing to look at why it is pernicious. They praise their socialist Catholic politicians. These are not liberal Catholics, but traditional ones, but not really.
If one acts as though God is not the end and means to the end of our lives, one is a practical atheist, If one compromises daily or chooses not be be a spiritual person in the here and now, one is a practical atheist. In applying for jobs, even traditional Catholics have told me to do something illegal, work under the radar. I said no. God does not bless deception. Holiness does not come from lying. "Gain the world and lose the soul" seems to be a forgotten phrase. And no one is interested in pursuing that discussion...One man told me that his entire family went to New York in the 1970s and worked illegally. That was the way to do it. A traditional Catholic, going to the Latin Mass bragging about criminal activity astounded me. But, I do not come from people who do illegal things for money. "Beg before stealing" is a motto of a poor Mexican family I know who live in poverty in the States. And, working under the radar is stealing. The island of practical atheists...
The post-Christian world is worse than the pre-Christian world, as people were given the Truth and have rejected it.
Living in ignorance is a lie. One chooses ignorance. One closes one's eyes to the Truth because it is comfortable.
That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand: lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. Mark 4:12 DR
Too many people do not want to see the Truth in themselves or in the Church here. They are not praying, "Lord, that I may see." Maybe it is too scary for them.
Maybe they want to be blind.
Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you should not have sin: but now you say: We see. Your sin remaineth. John 9:41 DR
And they plotted to kill Him after He said this....
