I was over on the InsideCatholic.com website today reading an article by Fr. Dwight Longenecker on the recent brouhaha over Fr. Jay Scott Newman in South Carolina. Fr. Newman was the priest who wrote the article in his parish bulletin strongly suggesting that those parishioners who voted for Obama should go to confession before receiving communion.
In my own commentary I suggested in the interests of fairness, that Fr. Newman should also have strongly suggested that anyone who voted for McCain should also go to confession because McCain supported embryonic stem cell research, which the bishops have also designated an 'intrinsic evil'. I felt Fr. Newman was being a cafeteria Catholic in his focus on the democratic candidate.
After reading Fr. Longenecker's article and the commentary associated with it, I realize I am totally off base. It isn't about the relative merits of one party versus the other with regards to abortion, it's really about those who have been co opted to Satan's camp and those who are faithful loyal Catholic followers in St. Michael's army.
I also learned from Fr. Longenecker that I am in the 'defiant' camp and my kind will be extinct in the next twenty years or so. I wonder if this code speak for the Vatican II 'boomers' as in most of us will be dead. Nah, can't be.
Here's Fr. Longenecker's description of the defiant Catholic as he determined from the thousands of emails which the parish received from all over the US. The other three categories were the demonic, the lame, and the loyal supporters:
But the "defiant" category makes up the largest number of our respondents, and is the saddest category of all. Statistics show us that these are the Catholics who sealed Obama's victory. They are people who were poorly catechized over the last 40 years in America. They have been nurtured in the Protest Generation and told that it is fine, even noble, to disagree with the Church. They have been taught to act according to their conscience without taking the trouble or time to inform it.
Caught up in the trendy agendas of the day, they have jumped on the bandwagons of feminism, environmentalism, homosexualism, socialism, and sentimentalism -- mistaking their favorite cause for the Catholic Faith. When they are confronted with clear, concise, and consistent Catholicism they are shocked and angry, and their response is (if they haven't done so already) to leave the Church, preferring their own wisdom to the wisdom of God.
Caught up in the trendy agendas of the day, they have jumped on the bandwagons of feminism, environmentalism, homosexualism, socialism, and sentimentalism -- mistaking their favorite cause for the Catholic Faith. When they are confronted with clear, concise, and consistent Catholicism they are shocked and angry, and their response is (if they haven't done so already) to leave the Church, preferring their own wisdom to the wisdom of God.
But then things get even more interesting:
In the next 20 years, this sort of Catholic will become extinct. As America descends further into decadence and decline, the lines will be drawn between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. People will have to choose whether to serve God and His Church or the dark side.
So it isn't about being democrat or republican it's about being a defiant Darth Vader or a Catholic Jedi Knight. I really wish I could see the world so black and white, but I'm not allowed to, I seem to be cursed with seeing into the depths of things and not their surface presentation.
Shining light into dark places sometimes means you really need to go deep into things to find the real hidden places where darkness is born, and it means starting with yourself. It's not pleasant and as I've written before it means confronting those original events which trigger your fear mechanism and all the defenses which are associated with protecting that defenseless child.
I can remember many times when I was very young calling on Michael to protect me from those things hidden in the darkness of my night time bedroom. Now when I call on Michael I'm more apt to be taken directly into those terrors to see where they originated and why they are still in effect.
Michael's metaphorical sword is one of love and to truly wield the sword means one must be able to love, to see the Christ in others, to see Christ in oneself, to seriously confront one's own shortcomings. Michael's sword is double edged. It's as apt to cut the wielder as it is a perceived enemy. It's not just about saying some rosaries and receiving the sacraments. That's only a start, an apprenticeship if you will. To go beyond the basics means self discipline and the courage to face your own shadow self. To go beyond the basics means to learn to unite oneself with and convert the 'enemy' not to divide and conquer them. This is exactly the kind of spiritual warfare that Jesus was engaged in, and if anyone thinks Michael is engaged in some other kind of warfare, they haven't really met him--yet.
