When President Joe Biden was asked by EWTN correspondent Owen Jensen what Easter means to him, he responded, “Time for forgiveness and people getting together, and a little bit of love and no phoniness. Be straight with people.”
At first hearing, it might be shocking to hear a self-professed Catholic define Easter without mention of Christ and either His death or Resurrection—with neither suffering nor sin. Yet perhaps it shouldn’t be.
Sadly, it is possible in many parishes to attend Easter services and hear the homilist utter none of the messages of the gravity of sin, the enormity of suffering, or the need for personal conversion. Instead, Easter is as it is in the secular world—a celebration that few remember the origins of and which we continue for the sake of the children. They enjoy the Easter egg hunts, after all.
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This indifferentism that borders on agnosticism is mirrored throughout the liturgical year, wherein the message of Christ is replaced with a neutered gospel that goes something like “tolerate everything, applaud everyone, and never make anyone uncomfortable.”
Bishop Fulton Sheen defined tolerance as “an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil.” We are not only patient with evil but we even refuse to label it as such for fear of not being inclusive and welcoming enough.
The new neutered gospel seems to appropriate words like kindness and love for its own aims, such that to be “kind” to someone is to lie to them, as long as you’re telling them what they want to hear. In this world of tolerance-as-virtue, priests who make the congregation uncomfortable are condemned as divisive or even uncharitable.
But most congregations do need to be confronted about the sins that the rest of the world celebrates. Congregations need to be protected at least by being told that what has become customary in our era is not acceptable, is beneath human dignity, and is below what we are called to. We need preachers of uncommon wisdom and courage, for these are uncommon times.
Medical professionals are cutting off healthy body parts because their mentally ill patients request it. If you thought of genitals first, it’s because that has become so established that you’re no longer surprised at the suggestion. In Quebec, a doctor just cut off a man’s fingers at his request, using the same logic of self-ownership and consent that has prevailed with transgender ideology.
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Other doctors are helping their patients to kill themselves. Divorce has become as common as marriage. And the national conversation about abortion centers not on whether women can kill their babies but when. These are irregular times.
A church that was doing its duty would have to speak about these issues regularly, if only to work as a counterweight against our age. In doing so, they would show true love and kindness.
It’s been said that in the days of pagan Rome, the minds of men were so warped with the images of debauchery that it would have made the path to Heaven more arduous. How could they enjoy the magnificence of a night sky, made all the more glorious without artificial lighting from a modern city, if those same stars had been characters in the stories of deviant gods? Could they watch the ripples in a pond without being reminded of the tales of indecency and flamboyance?
This is to where we head. As every area of public and private life gets infected with deviancy, it affects our thoughts and behavior. What we perceive as common becomes what we are willing to accept, if only out of tired resignation.
