S.K. Orr - a pen-friend, outstanding wordsmith, and recent Catholic convert - reflects upon the actions the Roman Catholic Church has taken in response to the birdemic crisis.
The people in charge do not believe what they say they believe.
If the leaders in the Roman Catholic Church truly believed that the waters at one of the most important shrines in the Christian world are efficacious in the healing of the sick, they would have gone to war on this issue, declaring that the shrine at Lourdes would remain open, that pilgrims are welcome, and that the leadership would indeed die on this particular hill if need be.
But they didn’t do that. Instead, they aped what every other group, religious and secular, has done in response to this mysterious virus. The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church does not believe what they claim to believe. Actions speak louder than words.
This is all very personal to me and has been for years now. When I was a Protestant, I used to inwardly gripe that many of my fellow churchmen didn’t truly believe what they claimed to believe. I could see it by how they lived, how they interacted with other people, how they conducted business, how they treated the people from the poor part of town. I see this same pattern writ large in my life today. Every person with whom I work is a professing Christian, some belonging to what I could call severe sects. All of them are losing their minds, worried about everything from sudden death to interstate highway shutdowns to bread lines to the mark of the Beast. When they catch me just staring at them, they tag on a “But God’s in control of all this,” or even worse, a “This is God’s wake-up call to America.” waving the holiness pennant from the pews or the office chairs.
Over the course of my life, I eventually came to see the Catholic faith as the surest and most consistent expression of the Christian message, and I came to this understanding by way of an arduous, jagged path. I am not a real Catholic, not an official Catholic. I see myself as a Catholic of the heart, living in exile. So I cannot even be comforted by the things that most Catholics can draw on. In fact, those folks do not see me as one of them. I say my prayers and attend to my devotions and cling to my lectio divina and correspond with a lively collection of monks and other Catholic clerics, and I say the rosary and observe the holy days, all to maintain a sense of the holy in my life, a taste of the mystery of the spirit, a sense of connection with the God Whom I’ve been chasing after all my life.
And then I see the leaders of the Church which holds my affection pull a stunt like this. It’s disheartening, in the literal sense of that word.
I found it disheartening as well. Read the rest of S.K's post here.
The people in charge do not believe what they say they believe.
If the leaders in the Roman Catholic Church truly believed that the waters at one of the most important shrines in the Christian world are efficacious in the healing of the sick, they would have gone to war on this issue, declaring that the shrine at Lourdes would remain open, that pilgrims are welcome, and that the leadership would indeed die on this particular hill if need be.
But they didn’t do that. Instead, they aped what every other group, religious and secular, has done in response to this mysterious virus. The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church does not believe what they claim to believe. Actions speak louder than words.
This is all very personal to me and has been for years now. When I was a Protestant, I used to inwardly gripe that many of my fellow churchmen didn’t truly believe what they claimed to believe. I could see it by how they lived, how they interacted with other people, how they conducted business, how they treated the people from the poor part of town. I see this same pattern writ large in my life today. Every person with whom I work is a professing Christian, some belonging to what I could call severe sects. All of them are losing their minds, worried about everything from sudden death to interstate highway shutdowns to bread lines to the mark of the Beast. When they catch me just staring at them, they tag on a “But God’s in control of all this,” or even worse, a “This is God’s wake-up call to America.” waving the holiness pennant from the pews or the office chairs.
Over the course of my life, I eventually came to see the Catholic faith as the surest and most consistent expression of the Christian message, and I came to this understanding by way of an arduous, jagged path. I am not a real Catholic, not an official Catholic. I see myself as a Catholic of the heart, living in exile. So I cannot even be comforted by the things that most Catholics can draw on. In fact, those folks do not see me as one of them. I say my prayers and attend to my devotions and cling to my lectio divina and correspond with a lively collection of monks and other Catholic clerics, and I say the rosary and observe the holy days, all to maintain a sense of the holy in my life, a taste of the mystery of the spirit, a sense of connection with the God Whom I’ve been chasing after all my life.
And then I see the leaders of the Church which holds my affection pull a stunt like this. It’s disheartening, in the literal sense of that word.
I found it disheartening as well. Read the rest of S.K's post here.
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