- A Servant’s Heart. Shows depicting the old British way of life with butlers, valets and maids for the wealthy upperclass might spark the American sentiment of indignation. After all, American’s might be tempted to ask “who would ever debase himself to become the servant of another?” Think Remains of the Day or Jeeves and Wooster. But working for Lord So-and-So or the Duke of Wherever most likely afforded the same type of cachet and name-dropping of which those who slave away for the likes of Google or Amazon are so proud. As a middle manager responsible for the Department of Whatever at Google, making merely a salary with no real wealth of your own, is there no indignation at your dependence? Well, at least you can say you work for Google – for whatever that’s worth.
- Ignoramuses. The left can be ignored and they know it, that’s why they’re resorting to violent protests now. How many conservatives use Google? or Apple iPhones? or go to left-leaning universities? Millions. Sure, there can be occasional reprisals if you bother to expose their hypocrisies (like the recent incident involving an employee at Google), but if you don’t work there you can just simply ignore the leftist ideologies of these companies and institutions. You don’t have to watch the little Google videos and you can still use Google search. You don’t have to believe in so-called “climate change” and still use an iPhone. You don’t have to subscribe to gender bending theories and still go to Yale. See or hear something offensive from these places? Ignore it. What the left wants is acceptance – like children with emotional disorders. The violence from Black Lives Matter, antifa and other leftist groups is just the tantrum that follows being ignored. And how do you stop a tantrum? Administer a dispassionate spanking. A little jail time will stop the protestors – it’s not worth what George Soros is paying them. Soon the leftist fad will pass with the sunset of its spoiled progenitors. In the meantime, just ignore it.
- Perfect Timing. The appearance of Jesus Christ in human history was perfectly timed by Almighty God. If Christ had come much sooner in time, there would be few if any written accounts of his actions and words. If he had come much later, there would be too many – imagine videos and photographs that could be altered or misconstrued, or a superabundance of commentary or “spin” that would certainly confuse many (as contemporary “news accounts” do today). As it happened, God’s timing was perfect and the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419) had a reasonably limited but complete set of accounts and writings to sort through to establish which were the inspired books of what is known today as the New Testament.
The Rot of Modernism
Something is off with the Catholic Church today but for many people it’s hard to nail down exactly what’s amiss. Is it the modern music? the rambling homilies? the smarmy glad-handing before communion? the chatting and general lack of reverence inside the church? Or is it something deeper like political liberalism within the hierarchy or a spineless approach to confronting disturbing social trends? These things are bad, but they are all symptoms of a much more grave reality – the scourge of modernism that is rotting the Church from within.
Pope St. Pius X identified the philosophical trend of modernism and its impact on theology and the humanities in the early 20th century. His encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, published in 1907, exposed the modernist heresy and warned the Church against its alluring ideas and wiley promoters. It was in Pascendi that he established the imprimatur and the nihil obstat as a means to provide the faithful with a safeguard against modernism in materials designed for their consumption. So what exactly is modernism, how has it affected the Church and how can we clear out the rot?