Vortex: Remediation Before Evangelization

In today's (Dec. 14) Vortex, Michael Voris says something I've been saying, too: until we fix some of the glaring problems in the Church, evangelization - new or otherwise - is going nowhere fast. I posted some thoughts about that here.

I agree with Michael Voris for the most part - almost completely; still, there IS hope, even if our local parishes don't quite measure up. For instance, I came into the Church despite the sloppy theology, the  "niceness", and the bad music. I came for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. But then, I came in because I had done my own research beforehand, and I knew what the Church taught by reading the Catechism. I also knew that the human element in the Church - any church, for that matter - will likely mess things up pretty badly. It was the doctrine that brought me in, not the niceness.

Anyway, it's still something to consider, because it IS a problem. Here's the Vortex:

Here's the script, with my emphases:

Amid all the talk and chatter and paperwork pushing about the New Evangelization, one issue is simply overlooked.

And that is this: IF the effort to get people to take a new or fresh look at the Church IS successful and they head on down to the local parish – Our Lady of Nice – what will they find, and what will be the result?

We’ll here’s an email we just received from a viewer, with the name changed for privacy:

“Though we were married in the Church, my wife isn't Catholic and in fact, never been baptized, having been brought up in a family where it was felt that one church was just as good as another.

“After about 30 years of marriage...we hit 35 this year, she expressed an interest in becoming Catholic as I had been introducing her to various prayers and the rosary right along...Her first doubts came when she attended Mass with me for quite a few months and was put off by the touchy feely banality of it all.

“Then I had arranged for a meeting at the rectory to see what she had to do to get baptized, and what we got instead was sitting down and talking with Father about the process, and then the Deacon, and the woman who basically runs most of the parish details.

“After about 10 minutes of listening to their "it takes a village" approach to Catholicism, a phrase actually used by them a few times, my wife just got up and walked out on them. As I was following her, the Deacon ran after me and asked what was the matter. I just shook his hand and thanked him for destroying 30 years of my time in convincing my wife of the Truth of the Church, and by giving her just a mish mash of protestant pabulum instead. That was the end of her wanting to enter the Church and even attending Mass with me.

“I pray that someday we will have the opportunity for her to enter the Church the way it used to be done, with some proper, truthful, non-lukewarm protestant type of entry.

“I still go to Mass and Confession for the only reason to pray for Holy Mother Church and for all who don't know what a treasure we had in the Roman Catholic Church.

“God love and bless you for all of your great work.  – BOB”

We and many others have been stressing this over and over ad nauseum: it’s one thing to get people to consider looking at the Church, but if what they sit down and take a serious look at is nothing more than the warmed over wreckage that most parishes are in the West, then nothing substantial can be accomplished.

The Church – the faith as it is lived and practiced and preached – needs to be fixed up before you can point people to it as a living example of the presence of Our Blessed Lord in our midst.

The happy-clappy, hyper-feminized Church is starting to look more and more like a bunch of gray-haired left over baby-boomer hippies from the Summer of Love. Their time has passed. In so many parishes and their staffs looking to be so relevant and hip and cool and neato and warm and fuzzy and welcoming, they are actually damaging not only themselves, but the souls that come to them.

People want truth. We are commanded to preach truth in all its brilliant and, yes, startling and uncomfortable clarity. If that bothers some people…too bad. Our Blessed Lord let them walk, but at least what they walked away from was the truth they didn’t want to hear.

How horrible that this poor woman, after resisting for so long, is finally willing to sit down and hear about it – and then at the Supreme Moment, she is confronted with the Church of Nice insanity.

In one sense, you can’t blame her for walking away; she did so for the right reason: because what was being told to her is warmed over silliness and nonsense.

Problem is, that is now what she thinks the Catholic Church is and preaches. So much for the New Evangelization. The new evangelization simply will not work without a little Old Time religion.

Dioceses need to realize that until they fix the trouble at home, no one is gonna want to sit in the house – except for the wrong reasons.