OPINION:
It has been a good week or so for Roman Catholicism.
A small group of nuns, Hawthorne Dominicans, came under attack from the state of New York because they refused to play along with the deeply dysfunctional (and in some cases, evil) requirements of the diversity, equity and inclusion crowd.
The nuns, who spend their days tending to terminally ill patients who have largely been abandoned by the world, were told by the state to do things they know to be wrong, so they refused and took legal recourse.
In full disclosure, I should note that my aunt was a nun in the Hawthorne Dominican order. Her last post was in Rosary Hill, the same place the state of New York is trying to muscle. She rests now in the cemetery down the hill from the convent.
Around the same time, President Trump decided to mix it up with His Holiness, Leo XIV, regarding the war with Iran. Chicago’s finest has made it clear on several occasions that this particular conflict seems unwarranted and the threats associated with it are excessive.
Mr. Trump disagrees, and in an on-brand moment, he alerted the vicar of Christ here on earth that he is “weak on crime,” a leftist and the usual.
In all fairness, the pope started the brawl by suggesting that our Lord “did not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Yikes. Were that so, then millions of soldiers who struggled to bring peace and freedom to the world, specifically through the waging of war, would be out of luck.
Let’s assume both Mr. Trump and His Holiness misspoke and got carried away. It happens to everyone occasionally.
In a moment that describes the chasm between believers and heathens, some pollsters actually asked about the pope’s favorable/unfavorable numbers. Let me help my secular brethren understand: The pope is playing to an audience of one.
The Catholic Church is not a democracy; it is run by the Holy Ghost. No word on what the Paraclete’s favorable/unfavorable rating might be right now.
How is all this good for the church?
Catholicism will always be at odds with the culture around it. That is the way it was set up by our Lord, who himself noted that the world would always hate us because it hated him. It tries to kill us, spiritually and sometimes physically, for the same reason it killed the author of life.
It is no accident that there were more martyrs, which is just a fancy Greek word for “witnesses,” in the 20th century than in all the centuries since Christ walked the earth combined.
No one, especially no one with power and cash, wants to hear that they are sinners and that they need to amend their lives.
Consequently, that is exactly the sort of thing the church needs to preach. If all we are is an echo of the surrounding culture, then we are failing.
We are supposed to be the leaven in this particular batch of bread. If something is going on that may not be completely kosher, then we need to say something. If the state authority tries to get us to do something we know is wrong, then we need to resist.
Being willing to say something means being indifferent to political considerations. I’m pretty sure that the judgment of the Lord is not going to be tangled up with a lot of political propaganda or concern over off-year elections or whatever.
I’m not sure His Holiness is entirely right about the conflict in Iran; I’m also not sure those on the other side are entirely right.
Finally, our eyes need to be open to the reality of the moment. Most of our fellow citizens are nonbelievers. Abortion is commonplace, as is the killing of the elderly and, in many places, state-sponsored suicide.
The faith has entirely withered away in its European homeland. Whatever beliefs they claim to possess, most self-identified Catholics in the United States neither attend Mass nor raise their children as Catholics.
We are on the verge of a new dark age.
The Catholic Church must understand that it will be required (again) to rebuild the civilization after the current set of Visigoths, Huns and Mongols are done.
An important part of that rebuilding will be recognizing that the civil authorities may sometimes be useful, but, more often than not, they are part of the problem.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.