Here’s
yesterday’s Vortex – fits in nice with my post on “criticizing” the Church,
wouldn’t you agree? Ha ha! MV always manages to say what’s on my mind!
The
full script is below, but I’ll give you some of the “money” quotes. For
instance, how do you know whether you’re attending a parish of the Church of
Nice? Well…
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| Don't forget light sabers as part of the litmus test... |
If you go to a parish replete
with altar girls, protestant hymns, an army of so-called “Eucharistic
ministers” (which they are NOT by the way); a joke-cracking priest; a
congregation receiving Holy Communion in their hands; warped catechesis coming
from the adult and/or kids’ religious ed department; no substantive preaching;
a congregation with more older people than younger families; and no one really
in between; where people around you – including you – dress in clothes more
suited for going to the movies than worshipping God; if almost the entire
congregation goes to Holy Communion, and a good number of them never return to
their seats afterwards; if it is customary to applaud the band or singers –
then you can be pretty certain, your parish is a Church of Nice.
You
might even be in a Diocese of Nice. That makes things really difficult, because
there’s no place to go where “niceness” isn’t the central value. I think I live
in such a diocese. At least, I was once told that the “content and attitude” of
my blog was “unacceptable for this Catholic Community here in Eastern Oregon”;
and that “in the Diocese of Baker we expect all of our Catholics to work
together to build up the Body of Christ.” But I think the prelate in question
meant that I was supposed to build up the Body of Niceness.
Anyway,
here’s MV’s litmus test for whether you’ve been “had” by the Church of Nice. He
suggests you ask yourself these questions:
What are is meant by the Four
Last Things and what are they?
What is wrong about using the
term Eucharistic Ministers?
What is an indulgence and why
is it important to know?
Can you explain why
Protestantism is a heresy? (Did you even know it IS a heresy?)
What are the various mysteries
of the Holy Rosary?
What does the Church mean by
the term “The Real Presence”?
What is the Mass?
Can you be a “good” Catholic
and still disagree with the Magisterium?
Do you even know what the word
Magisterium means?
Is it EVER possible to refuse
to believe an infallible teaching AND still be a good Catholic?
And
that’s just for starters, says MV. If
you don’t know why the issues listed in the first excerpt are problematic, and
you can’t answer all of the questions in the second excerpt, then, says MV, “you
need to be very concerned about your faith life.”
Here is
an appeal to any Catholic in the Church of Nice, or anyone who has a friend or relative
in the Church Nice: Please leave it now.
What is
the Church of Nice? It a worship community that sort of looks Catholic and
OFFICIALLY
is Catholic – but at the end of the day, authentic Catholicism has been sucked
out of it in almost every possible way.
There
are all kinds of signs you can look for to determine if your parish is a Church
of
Nice.
The
priest will never preach on anything controversial related to your eternal
life, like homosexuality, abortion, reception of Holy Communion as a divorced
and remarried parishioner.
He will
never utter a word about the immortal danger your soul is in if you are
co-habiting and/or having sex outside of marriage, or using contraception
INSIDE marriage.
Times
for Confession will be sparse, and practically none of the parishioners ever go
–including you.
If you
have been going to your Church of Nice parish for some years, you will
occasionally have the thought come to your mind that it seems like less and
less people attend.
You will
also notice that there are nowhere near as many young adults or families as you
remember from years ago. But the music director will bust out in a loud song
rich with lyrics about the community, instead of God, and you will forget your
thoughts about less people in the pews.
You
will also hear a strange thing from time to time about something the RCIA
instructor or Religious Ed director said in class and you will think to
yourself for a moment – “hmmm… that’s odd”, but then you will go on with your
business and forget about it.
Then
the occasional discussion will come up with friends and family who are former
Catholics
who bad mouth this or that about the Church – and while you might feel quietly uncomfortable
about their outbursts, you won’t say anything because, frankly, you don’t have
the knowledge to respond to them because it was never told to you.
And
eventually, you will allow yourself to be lulled into a false set of comfort
regarding their eternal lives by buying into the ridiculous diabolical canard
that it’s not REALLY important if they are Catholic or not; after all, they’re
basically good people and God understands and we are all going to Heaven anyway,
so it’s not that big a deal.
If you
go to a parish replete with altar girls, protestant hymns, an army of so-called
“Eucharistic
ministers” (which they are NOT by the way); a joke-cracking priest; a
congregation receiving Holy Communion in their hands; warped catechesis coming
from the adult and/or kids’ religious ed department; no substantive preaching;
a congregation with more older people than younger families; and no one really
in between; where people around you – including you – dress in clothes more
suited for going to the movies than worshipping God; if almost the entire
congregation goes to Holy Communion, and a good number of them never return to
their seats afterwards; if it is customary to applaud the band or singers –
then you can be pretty certain, your parish is a Church of Nice.
If you
have no idea why this list of issues are problematic, then you are almost
guaranteed to belong to the Church of Nice.
If you
don’t know the answers to the following basic questions, you should be
concerned:
What are is meant by the Four
Last Things and what are they?
What is wrong about using the
term Eucharistic Ministers?
What is an indulgence and why
is it important to know?
Can you explain why
Protestantism is a heresy? (Did you even know it IS a heresy?)
What are the various mysteries
of the Holy Rosary?
What does the Church mean by
the term “The Real Presence”?
What is the Mass?
Can you be a “good” Catholic
and still disagree with the Magisterium?
Do you even know what the word
Magisterium means?
Is it EVER possible to refuse
to believe an infallible teaching AND still be a good Catholic?
If you
can’t answer ALL of these questions – at least on some fundamental level – then
you need to be very concerned about your faith life. And this is just a beginning
list; it could easily have hundreds of questions on it.
What
the Church of Nice gang has been so fantastic at over the past 40 or 50 years –
and this means bishops and priests – is substituting knowledge with feelings. In
this manner, they have introduced into the faith a humanistic dimension that
has no place in the Church.
The
same madness that goes on in the culture about not being judgmental and always making
sure no one is offended has become paramount in the Church as well, thanks to the
Church of Nice crowd – hence the name, Church of NICE, where everyone is always
Nice.
If you
attend a parish that subscribes to the Church of Nice agenda – watch out. Your soul
is in jeopardy, serious jeopardy.
It is
very likely that your religious instruction is deficient, you haven’t been to
confession in God knows how long, and if you have children – they are bored out
of their minds and more than likely will stop attending Mass after they leave
home.
These
are all symptoms of a dying faith – and it can all be placed at the doorstep of
the Church of Nice.
The
Church of Nice is failing in spectacular fashion! It’s beginning to resemble
the Russian Front from the German’s perspective in World War II. It won’t be
much longer before the whole edifice is flat our overrun. As the Russian forces
– the Red Army – was overrunning town after town and province after province,
reclaiming all that had been taken by the Nazis in the previous two years, many
of the German High Command and the civilian population back in Berlin carried on
as though the eastern front was a sad fact, but not one they REALLY had to
worry about.
In
April 1945, the first Russian tanks crashed into the heart of Berlin. It took a
while, but when it happened, it was decisive and final.
This is
what is happening in the Church today – the portion of the Church, which is the
majority part of it – that worships at the Altar of Nice. It is being overrun
and the defeat is monumental. Two thousand US parishes closed in the last 20
years, 1300 of them in the past 10 years, with no end of closings in sight.
And why
has the Church of Nice risen to such heights of power and control? Because
fallen human nature is weak. Because most people don’t like confrontation and will
only occasionally do the right thing and challenge evil and wrong. Because
being vigilant – always vigilant – exacts a cost. And because sin is
attractive. And because we are lazy and slothful.
If it
were not for the Catholic Church, the whole world would end up in Hell, because
the
Catholic
Church is necessary for salvation. This is its charter – to be the instrument
of salvation – not merely a sign of salvation, but the actual instrument
through which God works His salvific action.
When
much of that Church casts aside that charter and adopts an inauthentic attitude
of
being
the Church of Nice, then the world will go out of balance – as it has – and the
eternal lives of those Church of Nice members hangs in the balance.
If you
attend a Church of Nice parish – get out of it and get to a parish where you
will get AUTHENTIC Catholicism – the real McCoy. If you have friends or family
who need to hear this, pass it along.
