Litmus Test for the Church of Nice: Vortex

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…

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.”

Many of our shepherds are failing us. Let’s pray for them, but let’s also educate ourselves. We can no longer count on them to lead us on the path of holiness. 

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.

If you have priests, or know of some, who are not fulfilling their duties to help you and your families get to heaven by bringing you the real faith – send them this. The clock is running out. The tanks will come crashing in to the town square soon enough – and when that happens – it will be too late.