What in the church fills me with life? I can split it easily into three parts, none of which we've done well under COVID-19, but all of which I hope will one day return.
1. Fellowship- as I Knight I value fraternity. But more than that, the old dinners and breakfasts and picnics and the easter egg hunt. Perhaps if we can get the Knights and the Young mothers to lead, these signs of community life can return, as the danger of COVID-19 wanes.
2. Moral Certainty, leading to hope of salvation - this too under the extreme partisanship that has appeared under COVID-19 is something that I miss. I used to shock everybody back in the 1990s by saying "I'm aiming for purgatory because I'm not good enough for Heaven, but if my Lord Jesus Christ sends me to Hell I shall gladly go and serve him there". Little did I know that a political party would arise in Rome to take me up on the offer- and that the Sacraments themselves would be denied me under threat of a disease, that we would sacrifice the faith of the young to the health and safety of the old. That we would deny life to those still living, to prevent those whom God wants in heaven from going there. That we would, under fear of death, withhold Jesus Christ Himself in the Eucharist from people- some of which have lost faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as a result. That we would deny a special needs child with sensory issues against wearing a mask, from encountering Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. I still feel like we never finished the Long Lent of 2020- and with all the talk of going to the margins and the embrace of the bigotry against morality found there, I wonder if there is still room in purgatory for a rigid moralist like me. If not, well to hell I shall happily go to serve my Lord Jesus Christ there, I guess.
3. Faces of the young- we're beginning to see families come back to mass, and the old adage of "If your church isn't crying it is dying"- referring of course to loud children at Mass- does hold. But the real value of the Church is in the family- the countercultural example of heterosexual lifelong monogamy, the best anti-poverty program ever invented for building generational wealth in this life and prayers for your soul in the next life. I fear that some voices this synod will listen to embrace postmodern anti-life sexual and family designs; so let my meager and rigidly moralistic voice suitable only for hell be raised in favor of long marriages and children! They're the only future worth aiming for, and the unique vocation of man and wife united to create the next generation of children, is a greater sign of God's love than the Eucharist itself. COVID-19 taught us that we can live without the other sacraments- but without this sacrament, without sacramental procreative marriage- there is no future possible.
These are the three reasons I am still Catholic. All else- social justice, even charitable work- seems to be able to be done equally well by atheists and pagans and protestants. The very things that attract others, don't attract me- I don't find life in them. I give anyway. I will continue to be charitable and as generous as possible, for there is no other way that I can earn both enough money to fulfill my responsibilities to family AND still divest myself of excess fast enough to even have a hope of purgatory, but I no longer see social justice as being central to the future of the faith, not when even the Pope recommends state welfare over church programs for providing justice.
Maybe one day, these three items can return, once Queen Kate has been term-limited and replaced. Maybe this synod is real and if enough of us rigid moralists raise our voices in support of heterosexual lifelong marriage, we'll actually see a change for the better. Maybe. On this slender hope, shall I go cheerfully in the path the Holy Spirit guides me to- even if that is to my own damnation.
Ted Seeber
Beaverton, OR
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