July 25, 2015
Feast of St. James, Apostle
In the opening verse of the Last Supper discourses, Jesus tells His Apostles, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Marked by the Lord’s tenderness in the midst of betrayal and unsurpassed suffering, Jesus seeks to allay the rushing tide of fearful thoughts that ebb and flow in those last remaining hours of deep and abiding intimacy. The Lord’s willingness to fully reveal all that concerns them and the Church, both in the present moment and in future days, confers a spirit of enduring hope and trust. The Apostles, henceforth, proclaim the Kingdom of God—notwithstanding their differences and inadequacies—with boldness, courage and with absolute unambiguous conviction!
In the midst of a still fallen yet redeemed humanity living in a fallen world, the explicit and lucid voice of the Church today seems to have been mitigated by the clamor and din of chaos that has turned our once God-fearing civil society into a mere vestige of our heritage. I am here speaking of the Church in America … the United States of America!
It is with a heavy heart that I write this letter which, I must admit at the outset, I did not want to write. But if not me, who? If not now, when? “Against all hope,” this most unworthy priest-servant, along with many of you no doubt, as well as every man and woman who has chosen to walk the “narrow path” and to remain faithful to the Gospel, albeit imperfectly, almost certainly believed that a clear, unified, and collective voice by our ecclesiastical leaders in the Church at this prevailing time of tumult would ring out resoundingly across this once God-fearing nation. Sadly, however, this desire on the part of all good people of faith and reason is found wanting, sustained by the unmistakable, mystifying silence.
As one ordained to the Sacred Priesthood of Jesus Christ at the age of fifty in 2003, and as a consecrated-slave of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Montford tradition, I have been inordinately blessed like you to be a sojourner with people of extraordinary faith that continues to edify me and sustain me in my pastoral duties as a spiritual father. And through the grace bestowed on us by Our Lady, Mediatrix of All-Grace, we have been something of an instrument for them, please God, helping to bring them ever closer to Our Heavenly Father and His holy, true and perfect Will and to Heaven. But as we know only too well, witnessing to the Gospel and the teachings of Holy Mother Church in objective truth and in agape love has and always will, come at a cost. Like the Saints and Martyrs before us, we are called to be the “salt of the earth and the light of the world” without concession. As one wise saying clearly puts it, “Nothing Less Than Everything.” This is the Way of the Cross!
Those of us who served in the U.S. Armed Forces learned firsthand the right and proper sense of duty, responsibility and commitment, as well as authentically living out expressions of fraternal charity that remain unparalleled in many ways. As for me, I served voluntarily and honorably in the United States Marine Corps and am a Vietnam vet. As a non-commissioned officer, the privilege of being provided countless opportunities to assimilate and acquire the myriad principles of leadership was tantamount undoubtedly to the very best of venues whether in academia, corporate America or even the Church. To a large or greater extent, the values of our training and commitment to serve God, family, and country with Esprit de Corps continue to serve me in my priesthood as I’m sure they remain integral in your life. Truth be told always, each and every facet of my own personal life experience has significantly emboldened me to more fully embrace my call as a “wounded-healer” priest-servant of Jesus Christ by passionately living-out the priestly, prophetic and kingly mission entrusted to each of us in a sacramental way. By our fidelity to the scriptural mandate to “speak the truth in love,” we are best able to authentically exercise our pastoral duty to “teach, govern and sanctify” God’s people, providing encouragement and confidence by both word and praxis, so that together we can meet the myriad and manifold challenges that confront us today while never conceding true Gospel living-out the ethos of the Christian life and the moral imperative of synderesis.
Similar in temperament to the Hebrew prophets, Amos and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Jonah, among others, we, who I contend are the prophets of today, are raised-up to quell the cacophony of chaos, disorder and patent error that continues to suppress all that is good, right, just, holy and pleasing unto God. Among other good “Works of Mercy,” we are called forth to “admonish the sinner,” “counsel the doubtful,” “instruct the ignorant,” while praying, fasting, and offering penance and mortification for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of souls. Those who have embraced the gift of faith and their God-given mission of evangelization through faith-filled discipleship without counting the cost or considering the risk, are many …both clergy and laity alike … and it is to our bishops and to us that the remnant look to for guidance and leadership “from the front,” as any leader worth his “salt and light” is called to do!
In his article, We Can’t Be Silent, His Excellency, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap. wrote,
“The Church can’t be silent in public life and faithful to Jesus Christ at the same time… Actively witnessing to our convictions and advancing what we believe about key moral issues in public life is not ‘coercion.’ It’s an act of truth-telling. It’s an act of honesty. It’s vital to the health of every democracy.” (First Things, May 2014).
Together with our bishops, the salvific mission of Christ is entrusted to us to be faithfully discharged in our parishes and schools and throughout the Church in America, to whom the faithful remnant, the hoi polloi, looks for the consistently clear voice of orthodoxy that echoes the Scriptures, Tradition and the universal, immutable Law of God, natural and revealed. Morality and ethics do not change or evolve; the matrix of plurality and tolerance distorts objective truth and spiritual things Above, symbolized today by the desecration of the “bow in the clouds” once meant as a sign of peace after the great flood.
Since the immoral and grave injustice of the decision handed down by a “narrow majority” of this nation’s highest court on June 26 [2015], most of our bishops have offered their pastoral statements. A few stand out above the rest for their clarity, resolve, and courageous leadership in the form of a fine Pastoral Letter that not only was to be read at every Mass after the proclamation of the Gospel, as His Excellency, Bishop Strickland “instructed every priest-celebrant,” but even goes so far as to include the mention of a forthcoming decree, “establishing, as particular law, that no member of the clergy or any person acting as employee of the Church may in any way participate in the solemnization or consecration of same-sex marriages, and that no Catholic facilities or properties, including churches, chapels, meeting halls, Catholic educational, health or charitable institutions, or any places dedicated or consecrated, or use for Catholic worship, may be used for the solemnization or consecration of same-sex marriages.” This, dear bishops of the Church in America … this is what we need to hear more of on a cohesively strong and powerful front that clearly articulates the truth in love, for as the Scripture says, “it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified” (Rom 2:13).
The venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once said, “America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance … tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.” He went on to say in his book, Life of Christ, “Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.” The poignant words of this Servant of God in 1958 loom uncannily and significantly true. Disdain for all that is noble, virtuous and God-fearing is the real bigotry that perpetuates chaos and anarchy, hatred, racism, duplicity, nihilism and all myriad expressions of deceitful cunning by proponents of Liberalism and Modernity. The sons of the Illuminati have sought to prevail upon us since the Enlightenment. And today they continue their battles on the “western front.” Were it not for the bold and courageous pontiffs of the mid-nineteenth and early 20th centuries, from Blessed Pius IX to Pius XI, we may have remained in ignorance, impotent to not only assuage the devilish deceit, fear, and manipulation propounded by Marxism, Socialism and Communism … but also to teach, instruct and catechize the faithful so that they could be inspired by the Vicar of Christ and the successors of the Apostles, as well as all priests, deacons and consecrated religious to “stay the course,” and to “fight the good fight” despite the manifold attacks from without and sadly, even from within the Church.
And so I ask: Why is it that we hear nothing more said about the travesty of Modernity and Liberalism and the wickedness of the Illuminati who have clearly sought to not just sully the Bride of Christ but to manifest its evil by the sophistry of prevarication within this once God-fearing, civil society founded upon the mores and principles of Judeo-Christian heritage? Why haven’t the good and faithful people of God, particularly the Church in these United States of America, heard from the Holy See regarding the grave and immoral act by a majority of judges in this country issuing forth their pagan, pseudo-justice that overtly mocks God? Why is this latest attack against God and Holy Mother Church not being unanimously repelled with resounding condemnation and de facto consequences by all ecclesiastical leaders, while at the same time, taking a pro-active posture to fight for our inalienable right to religious liberty and freedom of conscience without concession and without fear? Is it not valid and reasonable, therefore, to surmise that in the wake of the baffling silence, some measure of tacit approval or at the very least indifference has thus been rendered ipso facto?
The profoundly insightful words of Dietrich Von Hildebrand undoubtedly echo a clarion call vis-à-vis this seeming ambiguity:
”The soldier of Christ is obligated to fight against sin and error. His battle against the Antichrist is prompted by his love for Christ, and for the salvation of souls. He fights this battle for the salvation of those who have gone astray. His attitude is one of true love. But those who flee from the inevitable battle, and treat irenically those who have gone astray, obfuscating their error and playing down their revolt against God, are, fundamentally, victims of egoism and complacency.”
This deontological duty I contend resonates well with von Hildebrand’s notion of the “morally conscious man.” He states in Fundamental Moral Attitudes, “Moral awakedness is also the soul of the fundamental moral attitude which we have called ‘awareness of responsibility’.” Only the man with this consciousness of responsibility can justly appreciate the impact of the demands of the world of values …render[ing] an account to Someone Who is higher than he is.
We must awaken then from our indifference, mediocrity and apathy and regain a sense of moral consciousness that had always been our defining moment. This beloved country of ours was founded not only on Judeo-Christian principles of law and order but also upon a vision of hope-filled posterity ~ a posterity free from tyranny and the lustful foolhardiness of an arrogant monarch who demanded absolute servitude, paying no heed to God and His immutable and just Commandments. To achieve this freedom, countless men, women and children suffered in untold ways! They sacrificed all that was familiar and comfortable, having left behind them home, property, family and friends. They were willing to risk everything for the sake of liberty ~ even their very lives ~ so that the advent of a true nation under God, free from oppression and the insatiable wanton desires of unmitigated power, would become a bastion of hope for them and their progeny until the day of the Lord’s final return. This is the America that generations have always been willing to defend and protect with prayer and deliberate proactive measures that would neither count the cost nor consider the risk … but only ‘asked what we could do for our country!’
This is the America, the land of the free and the home of the brave that hundreds of thousands of boys-become-men have shed their blood for ~ and for whom many more today, along with girls-become-women, voluntarily have taken-up the banner of the sons of liberty and our heritage that boldly proclaims, “Don’t Tread On Me” and “Stars and Stripes Forever.” This is the America where our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have legally come seeking a better life for their families by assimilating language and bridging cultural differences, unifying them regardless of race, color or creed by their back-breaking hard work and not by a sense of entitlement and hand outs. This is the America that saw our churches and synagogues filled to overflowing by a people who acknowledged their blessings and who freely and generously offered their first-fruits back to God in thanksgiving and prideful worship each and every week. This is the America of many great and noble leaders, such as Ronald Reagan who spoke throughout his political life of the “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” This is the America that will not die!
The last remaining bastion of hope however for all people is the Church. And at this critical time of unleashed evil throughout our country and the world, we need to listen more attentively perhaps to the voices of our present-day prophets calling us back to absolute truth and to objective morality. We need our leaders, both within and without the Church, to be truly inspired men and women who will not cower nor compromise the constitutional law of the land that derived from God’s perfect immutable divine and natural law that needs only be defended and protected ~ not redefined. And we must once again claim our rightful and divinely-inspired stance upon that hill as a beacon of hope to light the way for all peoples and all nations along the “narrow path” which alone leads to the fullness of Life!
In Jesus and Mary always!
Pro Deo et Patria!
Rev. Fr. James Molgano