There’s a natural tension built into life and religion. In the east they call it Yin and Yang. There is male and female. We have natural tensions in our society as well. The left and the right. The jock and the nerd. The capitalist and the communist. Is it all just the same but a different expression? I mean that it comes from us, these different things, but they come from us as we see the world from different vantage points. We see the world differently at different times of our life and those expressions of difference can come from the same person. As we grow older we become wiser and with wisdom we see that frailty is our condition and because of this we become merciful. These expressions of our duality come from want. It comes from want as in we want to live, we want power, we want security, we want safety. St. Paul describes this tension as we might think of a fight and there are two sides wrestling one another as in the spirit that wrestles with the flesh. On the one side is love and mercy and on the other side is law and order. We see this tension personified in Martha and Mary. Mary is weeping at the feet of Jesus while Martha is doing all the work.
She (Martha) came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
What is the better thing Mary has chosen? Love, it would seem. There are those who are active and there are those who are contemplative and apparently the latter is the better of the two. Why would this be? Because nothing we do is really worth anything but loving God is worth a lot. We take pride in our action but seek the Lord in contemplation. This is a humble approach to existence in that when one realizes his action results into nothing then they realize the only real thing is that God created us and he loves us. We are not in charge of the outcome and he can put us into any situation he sees fit as he did with Job. We are only here because he thought to put us here. We are not here because we intended it. Our intentions, as in our work, mean very little. The church has a tension between those who are traditionalists and those who are modernists. The traditionalist wants to focus on the law and order of the church while the modernist wants to change with the times in order to encounter others who live outside of Europe and the western culture. The traditionalist wants to hold onto the glory years but the modernist wants to change with the times. He is not sentimental about the past. Or maybe it’s that the traditionalist sees the world sliding into madness and he wants to go to a solid anchor while the modernist wants to destroy what is good and decent. I don’t know which it is but in all things there has to be balance. Some times a thing is good but other times the same thing is bad like making a joke. Great at a party not so great at other times.
“We played the flute for you, And you did not dance; We mourned to you, And you did not lament.” Matthew 11:17
I think this tension comes from two different types of people. Those who have never been broken by the world and those who have been shattered.
The traditional Catholic is not welcome in the church or so it seems; the pendulum has swung the other way. We see a tension now with the Pope and those who are conservative and traditionalists. For those who don’t know, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland, was fired recently by Pope Francis. Bishop Strickland was an outspoken bishop who we can label as a traditionalist. He did not support Pope Francis, the synod on synodality and “vaccine” mandates to name a few. He also tweeted a very controversial tweet saying that Pope Francis undermined the deposit of faith. Strickland did support the traditional Latin Mass which went contrary to Traditionis Custodes, the controversial suppression of the Latin Mass by Pope Francis or put another favorable to the Pope, the unification of the church by having only one Rite of the Mass, the ordinary form. The Traditional Latin Mass was known as the extraordinary form and it was allowed after Vatican II by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI who said there was no schism by allowing two forms but instead they were two forms of the same Mass. However, according to Pope Francis, this caused division in the church and the provision allowing both forms was being used by bad actors who were seeking to undermine the church and Vatican II. Some will say there is a double standard with this decision especially when examining the other bishops around the world who are openly going against Catholic teaching. The conservative bishop is fired while the liberal German bishops (for example) are not given so much as a slap on the wrist. But Bishop Strickland also read a letter to a group of faithful Catholics stating that Pope Francis is the anti-Christ. There was also a letter rebuking Pope Francis’ stance on the reception of the Eucharist signed by Bishop Strickland which was implying that Pope Francis was a heretic.
With all the confusion and scandal one might think it would negatively affect the church. Under Pope Francis who doesn’t seem to like Catholic American conservatives the American church is growing. The number of priests in formation or seminarians in some places it is increasing. For instance, in the dioceses of Colorado Springs we have seventeen seminarians, a ten year high.
My take on this situation is that Bishop Strickland acted inappropriately but why is there is no mercy shown towards him? No tolerance, no counsel, no patience, no long suffering. It is easy to become polarized in this environment. I myself find that I sway from one side of the pendulum to the other at times. However, I find myself siding with the side of mercy more than the side of a strict reading of canon law, the bible or the catechism. I think of the adulterous woman who should have been stoned according to the traditions of Moses. Instead, Jesus said He did not condemn her and challenged those who would stone the woman. He asked which of them have no sin and then stated that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. The men instead of throwing the stones had their conscience so illuminated by their encounter with Christ that they could not in good conscience cast the first stone. But where is the mercy for Bishop Strickland? We like mercy but we don’t love it. Actions speak louder than words and by firing Bishop Strickland, Pope Francis is sending a message to all the bishops and it seems to be a very Machiavellian move but who am I to judge?
This story has other notes to it. For instance, just recently Michael Voris of Church Militant was asked to resign as President of the Detroit based news organization, due to a breach in the morality clause. We don’t know the nature of the breach but it led to the board accepting Voris’ resignation. Voris and Church Militant have been singled out by Pope Francis backers as ultra-right. Voris has said that Donald Trump’s election was divine and an answer to prayers and this caused friction with the more liberal Jesuits, such as Antony Spadaro. In 2017, Spadaro wrote “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A surprising ecumenism", where he says Voris equated Trump’s victory to Constantine in that Voris and the Americans believe that through this victory a true and authentic Christianity can be restored. This sort of belief is not ubiquitous to the American mindset and that Americans see the US as the last and ultimate nation that stands against evil and that all things lead to an the apocalypse. In this final battle of good and evil, America must fight the evil that is to come. However, at least half of our country didn’t believe this if not closer to one-hundred percent of us who reject this notion. Voris, along with other American voices such as Taylor Marshall, Father Altman, Patrick Coffin and others who reject the pontificate of Pope Francis or even deny that he is the pope are not the only point of view here in the US. Yet, Bishop Strickland who was beloved by these type of people was fired for what appears to be association with them. Many of us here reject a rigid Catholicism that is black and white with no allowance for human weakness but at the same time do not appreciate being attacked for being American. The tension between them is not our tension. We go to Mass and do our best however we can’t help but think there is something going on that seems sinister especially in light of a good bishop being fired. Maybe a little love and mercy would have been good. However, I believe this firing signals to others that Francis is not pro-west as he wants to develop ties to other parts of the world, such as China. He cannot be allowed to be seen as pro-American, that would be counter to the agenda. I myself would like to dis-associate from my opinions about things and seek the truth through reflection and love of Jesus. If we are to carry our cross where we are stuck between two warring factions fighting over petty differences, then so be it. In addition to that we turn our eyes towards all the things that we are grateful for such as family, our friends, our faith and Costco - a great American thing. Maybe they’re just jealous - do they have a Costco? I don’t think so. We also have a Sam’s Club, haters gonna hate.
On another note, Al Asad air base was attacked. Al Asad air base in in Iraq. It was attacked by Iranian backed forces and then the US made a counter-attack. Will this lead to yet another front? I spent some time there. It was an interesting place to be for a while. It had palm trees and it was a desert of course, very sandy and brown. It had a wadi or stream running through it which made a line of green in a brown ocean of sand. There was a place there that was said to have been a resting place of Abraham while he traveled from the Ur to Canaan. The wadi there at times had a strong sulfur smell due to natural hot springs that came up from within the earth. Me and a fellow Marine would go running every day we could along that wadi and I dare say it was even beautiful there. There were also burnt out Migs (Russian war jets) scattered throughout the base. It was Saddam’s main air force base. I would often run by one of the burnt out Migs just sitting there on the side of the road. Trippy to say the least. I would love to be able to travel to Iraq and Iran in peace some day as they both have places of beauty but it will probably not happen in my life time. We’re never going to have peace so long as we cling to the world and our opinions, which surface like sulfur from the nether world, and they do stink, but that’s just my opinion. I need to go to the feet of Jesus and contemplate His love and mercy.
Good read!