Has God Forsaken Us?

No. He hasn’t.

 

The Pope goes around saying things that, had they been said by Popes of a Christian past, would have probably caused him to die at the stake, and deservedly so. Bishops and Cardinals everywhere undermine Catholic teaching at every possible and impossible occasion. Many a Mass raises valid questions whether a valid consecration has taken place. Catholicism among the masses has degenerated to a very short list of the most trite banalities; banalities in which nowadays open denial of God’s rules is automatically contained; like the “inclusiveness” that ends up accepting adultery and sexual perversion, and the “social justice” that forgets that justice is not of this world.

Has God, then, forgotten us? Has he left us alone in the midst of wolves who attack us day in and day out, and demand that we “include” them, embrace their ideology, and accept it as True Faith?

It is, at times, seriously sickening to always have to write about the latest Papal scandal; or the latest bishop or cardinal desirous to earn brownie points by him; or the latest priest thinking that Castro has been sent by God like a new prophet.

It is sickening. But it is our lot. Could be worse, frankly.

Had God forsaken humanity when the Arian heresy had swept away almost all of Christianity? What must the faithful have thought during the many decades of its seemingly irresistible ascendancy? When even the Pope was at the very least their unwilling accomplice, and at the worst their willing one?

Had God forsaken humanity when the Plague swept Europe in 1348; ravaging a Continent with a violence never seen before, carrying to an early grave countless people, and destroying entire families?

Had God forsaken Europe when the Thirty Years’ War left almost all of Europe savagely ravaged, and Germany almost destroyed, with only the introduction of the potato saving them from countless further deaths of starvation?

Shall I remind you of the First World War, which was in these days, one hundred years ago, about to engulf Europe in a conflict the like of which humanity had never seen? Followed, just as the war had ended, by a short but terrible wave of disease which made, in a matter of weeks, even more victims again?

Last but not least: has God forsaken the countless Christians all over the East and the Middle East, and whose tragedy is now under our eyes – the eyes of those who want to see, that is – as it unfolds week after horrible week?

God never forsakes us, and His promise to be with us to the end of times will obviously stay. But we have to face our lot bravely; strong in this promise, as so many generations have done before us; living and dying in faith amidst the apparence of a crumbling world; and thinking, as we do so, of all those whose suffering has in these disgraceful times a much more concrete dimension than our rather comfortable complaint about probably the worst Pope in history, bar none.

Past generations had to deal with the Arians and the plague; with war, famine and disease. Eastern Christians have to deal with ruthless Muslim persecution, most evidently in Syria and Iraq but also elsewhere, and with discrimination as daily normality in many other Countries.

We have to deal with an old deluded atheist – and if you ask me, an old filthy man, for whom to live under an homosexual’s roof and to openly protect and promote him is being just hip and progressive – as Pope, spreading heresies from the very top as he undermines Catholic teaching every day; and with his minions, rivalling each other in their eagerness to establish who is the one who toadies to him the most.

God has not forsaken us, or the persecuted Christians in Mosul and elsewhere, just as he never forsook all the Christians who had to endure terrible suffering in the past.

We must soldier on in His name whatever He allows that it should happen to us, and draw from it the energy to live a live stronger in faith and, therefore, better able to endure the trials, and better suited to stay, one day, in front of our judge.

Mundabor