Errors In The Church Compromise Our Witness To The World

My colleague at Les Femmes blogged yesterday about the desecration of a statue of Mary by satanists in Oklahoma City this past Christmas Eve.  It does seem that these satanists are becoming more and more bold in their blasphemies and sacrileges.  As you watch the video, notice some points:

• There was a Catholic presence to oppose the debacle and to do reparation.  Apparently there were enough of them so that their prayers were drowning out the satanic chants.
• I've never noticed the satanists attempting to mock protestant faiths - only Catholics.  Their antics may well be a "back-handed" acknowledgement that the Roman Catholic Church is the One True Church.

The Catholics who mobilized for their actions, particularly TFP Student Action, are to be commended for their willingness to fight the evil where it occurred.  Several of them were interviewed.  One of them said "it's extremely important to oppose satanism publicly because the liberal media are trying to mainstream satanism".  He is absolutely correct.  We must be in the public venue wherever evil is.  It is important that we pray in churches in front of the Blessed Sacrament, but such prayer is not sufficient.  We must (note the imperative "must") muster up courage and resolve and get ourselves out there, no matter the cost.

But insidious evil exists not only outside the Church but within her walls in even in the ranks of the hierarchy - including the Vatican.  Almost a year ago there appeared in Crisis Magazine an article called "Can Christianity Survive The Sexual Revolution".  The first sentence is a question: "When was the last time anyone heard a sermon that condemned the evils of fornication, or adultery, or cohabitation, or divorce, or bearing children outside of wedlock (let alone homosexuality)?"  To be honest, I can't remember when.  In all fairness, we do hear at my parish quite frequently the need for the sacrament of confession, but without a recitation on what constitutes mortal sin, I cannot see how folks will perceive an urgent need for the sacrament.  Now once again I must notice in this article the lack of mention of the evil of contraception; that should have been added to the litany recited by the author.  Still, his point is well-taken.  We as a church will find it difficult, if not impossible, to combat evils outside the church when we are too cowardly to mention them from our pulpits inside our churches.  It's quite possible that this author is not Catholic; that might explain his ignorance about the inherent evil of contraception.  However, another protestant author has pointed out some big problems within Catholic hierarchy.

One Protestant blogger writes "Why Is Pope Francis Insisting Once Again That The Cross Of Christ Is God's Failure?"  And just in case one thinks this author is taking the pope's words out of context, here is the full text of the talk in question as it appears at Catholic News Agency.  This, plus the gaffe regarding Jesus' alleged "apology" to His parents after His time in the temple (memorialized in the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary), seem to be lame attempts to "make Jesus relevant to modern man".  That is just my speculation, but what it does is strike at the heart of Who Jesus is as the Second Person of the Trinity - God Himself.  The author is rightly perceiving the truth of the pope's ongoing scandalous gaffes, but is using the situation to urge us to leave the One True Church.  Here we have prima facie evidence of real scandal being caused by papal carelessness to those outside the Church. 

These errors must be called out, for they render the Church weak in standing for God against an increasingly God-hating world.