The story begins with a bang and within a few paragraphs its central plot is revealed in an earthly paradise, Marriage. By chapter three the reader is presented with the human train wreck, sin and death, the result of the fall from grace instigated by an evil power. All of human history can be summed up as a battle between those who seek to normalize the fall and “live according to the desires of the flesh” and those who walk by “Life in the Spirit,” as it was “In the beginning” (cf. Genesis, Gal 5:16-25, Matt 19:3-8).
The epicenter of this battle is the attempt to destroy the Crown of Creation, the Imago Dei, the Primordial Sacrament…Marriage.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27).
If you have followed my work or attended a presentation on Stolen Childhood Innocence you know that SEL or Social Emotional Learning, is a Trojan Horse. It is especially popular in our public school system, where it is used like a hypodermic injection, to help deliver an ideology and make it more palpable to children, be it Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, or Critical (insert ideology) Theory.
SEL is used to combat the cognitive dissonance that children, or any of us, experience when the toxic sewage being presented does not match the law written on our hearts. Inject an ideology through SEL and use words like empathy, fairness, compassion or reproductive rights and over time a human being might learn to numb the knot in their gut that initially made them feel uncomfortable, as with the murder of a child in the womb. Or with the illogical idea that one can change their sex, without even being able to define the sex they are changing into or out of.
SOS (my acronym that I think appropriate) for Synod on Synodality, is the same Trojan Horse by a different color. This time it is the Shepherds of the Church using the same genre of emotional babble to prepare the faithful for an injection of heresy into their trusting hearts. Might they learn to deaden the voice of God and accept the heresy of say a Father James Martin, a favorite of Pope Francis, who has been allowed and even encouraged to advance the normalization of homosexuality and same-sex marriage within the Church, while opposing voices are censored or ignored.
As Kevin Wells recently wrote, “Among the Pope’s selections to be voting members of the Synod on Synodality are Cardinals Blase Cupich, Wilton Gregory, and Robert McElroy—confirmed progressives with track records of steering dioceses closer to their own ideologies. Each of these cardinals has invited Fr. James Martin (another Pope-invited Synod voting member) into their terrain; each has also allowed “Pride Masses” to be celebrated in their diocese. These men are the voters of the same Synod that German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called a “hostile takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ.” (Bishop Strickland: Laying Down His Life for His Sheep)
My brother Danny was a beautiful child. His good looks, thick head of dark brown hair, intelligence, and eager smile were his trademarks. But his best feature was a huge trusting heart that was open to anyone, especially if they were a bit down or needed a friend.
Excited to be an altar boy at the local Catholic Parish, where he attended school, he would find that some Shepherds were not to be trusted. In fact, some are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Danny was groomed and robbed of his childlike innocence by the Pastor, who sexually molested him over a number of years. We would learn this as he was dying of HIV AIDS. Danny, like so many others I have since met who were involved in homosexual or other alternative sexual lifestyles, had been molested as children. There are now 60 million adults in American today that were sexually molested as children — a staggering number of the walking wounded.
Danny would find a faithful priest who led him back into the Church. As he grew too weak to attend Mass this humble priest would come and bring the Eucharist to him at home. Walking out of his room one day the priest turned to our mother and said, “there is a little saint in the making in that room.” We are all wounded in some way, we all carry our crosses, and we all have free-will.
And we are all going to die. When Danny was buried two dates were written on his stone. The day he was born and the day he died. Between those dates is a dash, we all get one. How you live in that dash determines your legacy and where you will spend eternity. The final words of Danny’s dash were to his brothers and friends gathered at his bedside, “Lets pray, pray to God.” Before Danny took his last breath I had an encounter with the risen Christ that would change the direction of my life, forever.
At the time of Danny’s death I was a professional chef who owned a number of restaurant concepts. I employed Gay managers, Lesbians, Atheists, Agnostics, Black, White, Asian, Mexican, Muslims, Jews and Christians. We were family. We took care of one another. When I came back into the Catholic Church after a twenty-year absence I felt an additional responsibility to them; to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I would often tell Danny’s story and the encounter we shared, “Let’s pray, pray to God,” and I’d invite them to seek their own encounter. I learned from Saint John Paul II not to impose, but to always propose what is true, good and beautiful, the Word, with the clear understanding that we are all created free to accept or reject Him.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt 18:10-14).
There is a train wreck coming, in fact it’s already here, and it’s going to get worse. Take a few minutes to reflect on the radical dysfunction going on in so many lives. How many people have experienced the pain of divorce, children out of wedlock, pornography addiction, sexual abuse, eating disorders, gender dysphoria, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, abortion, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, increasing crime on our streets and the threat of nuclear war once again on the horizon.
In the past when the governments of the world became tyrants, or when marriage and the family was under attack, at least we had the Church to remind us that we have an eternal destiny, that we are made for more. That is no longer the case. What makes today’s crisis worse is that the majority of the Shepherds are either lukewarm, silent or ideologues themselves.
Instead of proclaiming the Gospel, the working document for the SOS is titled “enlarge the space of your tent.” It reads, page after painful page, like a redundant chant of radical inclusiveness and spirit, reminiscent of Woodstock in the 60’s. “The vision of a Church capable of radical inclusion, shared belonging, and deep hospitality according to the teaching of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the synodal process: Instead of behaving like gatekeepers trying to exclude others from the table, we need to make sure that everyone can find a place and a home here.” This is the language of SOS, where it no longer matters what you do in that dash called your life. Life has meaning as long as it feels right to you, the self-proclaimed arbiter of truth. An often-repeated theme of the document is to be a listening Church. But most of the good priests I know already spend most of their day doing just that, listening. The whole SOS would seem like a colossal waste of time, until you understand that its purpose is to set up the faithful for Critical Marriage Theory, led by Father James Martin look-alikes. Feeling uncomfortable in the pit of your stomach? The SOS injection is here to help. The document states, “those who, for various reason, feel a tension between belonging to the Church and their own loving relationships, such as: remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in polygamous marriage, LGBTQIASS+ people, etc.”…and those in same-sex relationships who “expect the Church to accept them and their way of behaving.”
My former restaurant employees would love this document. “Enlarge the space of your tent” would have gotten them all into the Church singing kumbaya and believing they had a get out of jail free card and a pass right into heaven’s gate.
Jesus had a different message, “In the beginning it was not so”. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt 7:13-14).
He immediately follows up in the next verse, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Our shepherds and priests best heed the words of Peter, our first pope who said, “But false prophets also rose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1).
Buckle up. We are in for a rough ride. Sr Lucia, the main visionary of Fatima, replied in a long letter to Cardinal Caffara, who wrote her asking for prayers after Saint John Paul II asked him to establish the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family in Rome (sadly it has since been destroyed and renamed by Pope Francis). She wrote, “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family. Don’t be afraid,’ she added, ‘because whoever works for the sanctity of Marriage and the Family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” Then she concluded: “nevertheless, Our Lady has already crushed his head.”
As an innocent lamb Jesus took on a body, a man born of a woman, and merited for us life by the free shedding of His own blood. In Him God reconciled us to Himself and among ourselves; from bondage to the devil and sin He delivered us, so that each one of us can say with the Apostle: The Son of God “loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal 2:20). By suffering for us He not only provided us with an example for our imitation, He blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on new meaning (cf. Gaudium et specs, n. 22).
Jesus loves us to the end and goes out looking for his lost sheep, meeting us where we are. But He loves us too much to leave us in our brokenness. The Redemption and New Life that He offers us is Collective, a free gift given to each and every human being. But Salvation, eternal life, is individual, you must receive and open the gift. You have to say yes.
Image credit: synod.va
