COVID and the Catholic Church

American Thinker.com ^ | December 19, 2021 | Michael C. Hurley

[Kaslin]

I opened YouTube one morning recently, as usual, to hear another excellent homily by a hugely popular young Catholic priest from Canada. The title of this episode revealed that the latest COVID madness of requiring vaccine passports for attendance at Mass had just come to Quebec. And yet, as I heard the priest begin his rebuttal to this astonishing overreach, my heart sank.

This young priest made the grave error, as have nearly all of the clergy and Church hierarchy since the beginning of the pandemic, of first assuming that the spiritual mission and heavenly government of the Church must be accommodated to the shifting politics and priorities of the civil government. He proceeded to beg for relief from the new restrictions — not by questioning the authority of the government to impose such restrictions at all, but by noting how scrupulously the Church had thus far complied with other equally nonsensical mandates, such as occupancy limits, social distancing, masks, and obsessive-compulsive hand-sanitizing. But once you have accepted the authority of the State to tell you when and where to jump, your only recourse is to ask, "How high?" Predictably, the opinions of the clergy about how high is high enough will take a distant back seat to the agenda of Anthony Fauci and Justin Trudeau, et al.

Christ was completely radical by the standards of the current leadership of the Church. He said to Peter — three times for emphasis — "feed my sheep" (John 21:15-17). He did not say, "Feed my sheep, provided you can do so in complete safety and at no legal jeopardy to yourself, or otherwise forget it." Peter and the other apostles took these words to heart.

[livius]

Very good article. He’s right…the churches demonstrated utter contempt for the faithful by slamming the door in their faces during this nonsensical government-created panic, and those people aren’t coming back. The churches should stand up now, while they have any faithful left, and start acting like the religion actually means something.

[MDLION]

The modern Catholic Church is too worldly, it’s too interested in currying favor with the world. Jesus tells us to be in the world but not of it, that the world cannot accept the spirit of truth because it neither sees it nor knows it and that the world will give us trouble. The world is giving Catholics trouble during COVID through church closings and job losses if they don’t want to play Russian roulette by taking a risky vaccine and where are most of the shepherds? Maybe Jesus is permitting evildoers to purify His Church. It’s as if he’s saying: Okay, you wanna be friends with the world and put serving it above serving me, see how that works out for you.

[Alberta's Child]

It’s hard to blame this young priest. Culturally, Canadians have been conditioned to be the most docile, compliant people you’ll ever meet. And Quebec is worse than anywhere else up there because of their historical unhealthy link between the Catholic Church and the secular civil government.

[livius]

That’s true. The sad thing is that I expect to hear the same words here from the clergy in the US if the government imposes more restrictions (as is rumored for next week). And we don’t even have the excuse of being Canadians, docile from birth!

The clergy here were terrible the first time around, even exceeding the supposed “requirements” and completely abandoning the people while spouting about how virtuous they were by obeying the government. In the US, I think the Church is particularly addicted to the Federal Government because they receive money and tax breaks from it.

[ReaganGeneration2]

The Church and Protestant denominations allowed the lack of meaning to creep into peoples lives, slowly for decades, allowing Covidianism to reign in them, not the Lord.

THERE, I SAID IT