Opening the Windows of the Church

Pope John XXIII asked that we throw open the windows of the Church to the world. Doing so has turned out to be disastrous since the world does not want to engage with the Church unless we follow the world’s ways and abandon the ways of Christ. The world is not interested in dialogue; it has a monologue to which we are expected to give assent. It is not for nothing that Christ said He had taken us out of the world: “you do not belong to the world, I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (Jn.15v19). Sadly, many members of the hierarchy seem so taken with dialogue that they have forgotten Our Lord’s words to Saint Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn.14v6).

There is only one Way to heaven: Christ and His Gospel. The Church seems reluctant to preach that truth, while the world seems determined to criminalise it with devout Christian’s being persecuted for living by The Gospel, such as those who have refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex pairing; those who refused to let hotel rooms to a same-sex pairing, and the lady who refused to sign marriage certificates for same sex pairings. The world with which many in the hierarchy want us to dialogue is a world that persecutes us and wants us to approve of the killing of babies in the womb and of the dying.

The Church has, it seems, forgotten that death will not dialogue with life -it seeks to overcome it, and that darkness will not dialogue with the light because light by its very nature light dispels darkness. How blind can some in our hierarchy be? Do they not realise that they are trying to engage with a world that seeks only the destruction of the Gospel so that the worldly can have things their way (and at the root of all the attacks against religion is nothing other than the pull of the flesh: the worldly want to be able to indulge in sex whichever way they want it, with whichever person they want it, and at whatever time they want it -with no responsibilities whatsoever. It is not to end persecution or inequality that causes the world to attack the Church; they attack the Church because she proclaims the natural law, contrary to their desire to have legal support and protection for indiscriminate sexual experience and an unbridled sexual appetite.

The world will only be happy when religious people take their moral norms from what is legal, and they are only going to be happy to let us worship as we need to as we do not preach the Gospel during that act of worship, which the over-sensitive and misconstruing mind might describe as ‘hate speech’ (though we preach only against acts, and never people).

I tire of but will not stop saying that we need [1] put the catechism back into schools; [2] offer liturgy that thanks and adores God; one which offers propitiation for sin and petitions God for grace, rather than what we have now which too often celebrates and entertains man; and [3] impose canonical sanctions where they apply (to errant theologians and politicians who vote for anti-life legislation). The salvation of souls is at stake. No one doubts the good heart and intention of those who seek to “lift the burdens from men’s shoulders”, but if it is lifted by falsehoods; by telling folk they are not in sin when they are, no good can from it. Souls will be lost by those who deliberately choose lifestyles which contravene the law of God, and with them will go the souls of the hierarchy who condone and affirm those lifestyles. Pray, and fast for the Church and for souls –and give united public witness from the whole Church to the world of today.

The new evangelisation is the re-evangelisation of the Catholic people according to Pope John Paul II, who said we need a “new evangelisation of those peoples who have already heard Christ proclaimed” –but it would never have been necessary had we kept the Catechism in our schools and drawn out its message in later school years as all the best teachers did, while worshipping with God at the centre instead of us.