Election Reflection for Warrior Catholics

Catholic Exchange ^ | November 8, 2012 | FR. JOHN HOLLOWELL

[NYer]

I became a priest because God was calling me to it. I can promise you…it wasn’t my idea. At the time of my calling, and indeed throughout seminary, I imagined being a priest in a medium-sized parish, baptizing babies, marrying couples, growing old, and eventually dying and going to heaven.

Perhaps to keep me from running away, I was spared viewing the type of priesthood that God has since let me know that I would ACTUALLY be called to. Practically from my ordination day, I’ve felt (and been shown) that the priesthood God is raising up in me and my fellow priests of my generation is a priesthood of warriors who will fight and die for the faith. I’ve also realized, from pretty early on, that this generation of warrior priests would be, in an earthly sense, too late. It is tempting to ask, “why didn’t God raise up priests like this 40 years ago?” I don’t have the answer, but I know enough to know that God has his reasons.

It began with homilies…when people would come up and complain about them I would sit there and have a kind of out of body experience and think “I should be really affected by this, but I could care less that this person is yelling at me right now.” Of course it continued with videos spreading out across the country to friends and foes alike…I remember thinking “I should be really sad that people are attacking me” but I remember in those moments being overcome with the urge to chuckle at how little it actually DID affect me. You, as a faithful Catholic, have likely had similar experiences…and that is God working in you and preparing you for what is to come as well.

And so it begins…

^[1]I’m a bigger fan of authentic peace, but I’d rather have a battle than surface level passive-aggressive “peace” that simply masks evil. I’ve seen, in 3.5 years of priesthood, that perhaps a battle would do us all some good. If the stats hold true, 40% of Catholics who go to Mass every week just stood in open defiance of their bishops and the Church in voting in the affirmative for a candidate who:

1) supports redefining marriage
2) supports forcing the Church to do something it will never do
3) is for abortion through all 9+ months of pregnancy
4) is for the government helping people procure abortions if they can’t afford one
5) provides for the destruction of human embryos for research

Please draw me up a candidate who could more completely embody the opposite of Catholicism.

The Catholic Church in the United States is a cage that needs rattling, and the coming battle will provide just such a shake-up. The days of bishops and cardinals yucking it up with anti-Catholic politicians will soon be at an end. The days of bishops and cardinals wagging fingers at anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians and telling them not to cross this line again…and then redrawing the line further back…those days will soon be at an end.

And I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lazy part of me that prefers comfort and wishes it never had to come to blows like this surely will…but there is another part of me that realizes God is doing something in the hearts of faithful priests and Catholics and I think we’re on the edge of something that will be unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace. I’ve come not to bring peace but rather the sword.” – Jesus Christ. He brings the sword because the sword wakes people up, and it is better to be awakened at the last moment so that one can still repent than it is for a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul.

………….

My favorite scene from the Dark Knight Rises movie is at the beginning. Commissioner Jim Gordon is at a podium and a couple of fatcat politicians are talking about him from afar:
fatcat 1: “He’s going to have plenty of free time, the mayor’s dumping him.”
fatcat 2: “But he’s a hero!”
fatcat 1: “He’s a wartime hero, this is peacetime.”

“Wartime Heroes” always seem clumsy, brutish, unpolished, unrefined etc. when things are going swell and dandy and everyone has enough food to eat. Wartime heroes don’t know how to make a martini and don’t have a room full of stogies, but when peacetime evaporates, no one gives a dang about priests and bishops and leaders that are “refined” and “dignified”, people turn to warrior priests and warrior Catholics…they will turn to us soon…and we will be ready.

[NYer]

The days of bishops and cardinals yucking it up with anti-Catholic politicians will soon be at an end. The days of bishops and cardinals wagging fingers at anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians and telling them not to cross this line again…and then redrawing the line further back…those days will soon be at an end.

The end of those days can't come soon enough.

[Michigander222]

Wow 40% :( Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

[FamiliarFace]

Amen!

[NYer]

As freeper, Iscool, noted on another thread, the breakdown of catholic voters follows party demographics.

---

8 out of 10 white Protestants voted for Romney...95% of black Protestants voted for Obama...

6 out of 10 White Catholics voted for Romney...75% of Mexican Catholics voted for Obama...

---

Viewed in its proper context, a clearer picture emerges.

[Dr. Sivana]

Wow 40% :( Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

The number changes when you talk about people who actually regularly go to Mass. Also the trend is in the right direction.

[yldstrk]

As a Catholic who also spent a lot of time in the Methodist Church, I can tell you this: The Methodists are humanists who hate conflict, and I am embarrassed by those Catholics who voted for baby killers. Yes, I know it isn’t “civilized” to call it baby killing. But that is what it is. A murder of an innocent by any other name is still a murder. I too feel like one of the warriors this priest is talking about. My birth family and all my relatives voted for the democrat. I am so isolated in my Orthodoxy. However, I cannot help it. It has been this way for me since I was a kid. I have to walk this road.

[Michigander222]

“However, I cannot help it. It has been this way for me since I was a kid. I have to walk this road”.

Me too. Fortunately, I have like minded family. Hang in there.

[Dr. Sivana]

Wow 40% :( Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

The number changes when you talk about people who actually regularly go to Mass. Also the trend is in the right direction, as the number were worse before. We are still recovering from a problematic generation that got started up in the '60s.

[Jim Noble]

Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

There's no such thing as an "American" Catholic Church.

There is a large and growing heretical movement within the Catholic Church, mostly composed of Americans and some Western Europeans. Why Jesus has not dealt with this problem yet is not known to me, but this problem does not create a separate Catholic Church in America.

[oldbrowser]

Viewed in its proper context, a clearer picture emerges.

The real picture is of the people that did not bother to vote.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I’d like the church to take the idea of a “warrior priest” a step further, if not into actual combat.

All over the world, there are Catholic (and many other Christian) communities that are sorely oppressed by the people around them. More than anything else, they need practical guidance of “how to protect themselves from their oppressors, so they do not have to defend themselves from their oppressors.”

Imagine a large lay organization of Catholics trained as soldiers, with “warrior priests” as chaplains, that would travel the world to such communities to teach them ways to protect their community, each other and themselves from attacks by hostile outsiders.

This would be at times an unofficial and discreet effort, and at times under full diplomatic license from the Vatican.

First, experts would examine a community to evaluate it and what it could reasonably do to protect itself. Skilled military people can be very adept at this, as well as imagining inexpensive and pragmatic ways to adjust to improve security. At the same time, the “warrior priests” would evaluate and assist the local clergy and act as liaisons to the community leaders.

Next, they would network the people of the community so that they know how to mutually support each other. Much of this would be in the creation of communications and “emergency services” as it were. Standing together is much stronger than facing the enemy alone.

Then finally, every able bodied, willing person in the community, and the children, could be taught basic unarmed martial arts. This is based on the principal that even modest resistance to an attacker makes the attack much harder. Such attackers tend to be cowardly and to want an easy attack, so if it is made more difficult, they are less inclined to continue or try again.

In any event, the cost of creating such an organization is small compared to the enormous benefits it can provide around the world.

[AlexisHeavyMetal1981]

Wow 40% :( Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

---

Michigander, please do not give up. YOU must put on your warrior armor yourself, like I have. It is up to YOU to talk to your fellow parishoners about the coming battle so that YOU can help them put on THEIR warrior armor.

If your pastor has not said much about the battle of good vs. evil, then YOU must remind him that he is the leader of the flock.

If he does not talk about the evils of abortion, same-sex, in-vitro fertilization, babies out-of-wedlock in the coming weeks after you have spoken to him the first time, then YOU must gather several of your warrior friends and, as a group, tell your pastor that you expect to hear from the pulpit these things.

This is a battle that we must engage. Along the way you will convert your friends back to true full communion with God.

Onward Soldiers For Christ!

[sneakers]

Amen to that NYer.

[MondoQueen]

I’ll tell you where there are some more “warrior Catholics”. They are among the laity; at the Latin Mass. In the Latin Mass that I go to in the Chicago area, the priests are warriors and so are the parishoners. I believe these people will save yhe Catholic Church.

[sneakers]

Amen to that NYer.

[oldbrowser]

Wow 40% :( Maybe the Catholic (American) church isn’t the place for me.

The Catholics that should be shown the door are the ones that openly flaunt the churches teaching. Here is my suggestions for starters:

Pelosi, Biden, Tom Harkin (Iowa, D) , Richard Durbin (Illinois, D) , Mary Landrieu (Louisiana, D, John Kerry (Massachusetts, D),Barbara Mikulski (Maryland, D) , Claire McCaskill (Missouri, D) , Robert Menendez (New Jersey, D), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York, D) , Jack Reed (Rhode Island, D), Pat Leahy (Vermont, D) , Maria Cantwell (Washington, D), Patty Murray (Washington, D).

[Chainmail]

The warrior part is when all of us of faith fight - through letters, vigils, demonstrations, prayer. We have to drive our church leaders where they won’t go: to oppose the open sin and scandal of “Catholics” who support abortion and gay “marriage” and unneeded wars. We need a church militant in this time of immoral descent.

[pgkdan]

The Catholic Church in the United States is a cage that needs rattling, and the coming battle will provide just such a shake-up. The days of bishops and cardinals yucking it up with anti-Catholic politicians will soon be at an end. The days of bishops and cardinals wagging fingers at anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians and telling them not to cross this line again…and then redrawing the line further back…those days will soon be at an end.

I'll believe it when I see it! I've been hearing for years that this is the year/time/election that the bishops are finally going to start standing up for what they're suppoded to believe. As I said, I'll believe it when I see it.

And I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lazy part of me that prefers comfort and wishes it never had to come to blows like this surely will…but there is another part of me that realizes God is doing something in the hearts of faithful priests and Catholics and I think we’re on the edge of something that will be unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

Again. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Dr. Sivana]

The Catholics that should be shown the door are the ones that openly flaunt the churches teaching. Here is my suggestions for starters:

Pelosi, Biden, Tom Harkin (Iowa, D) , Richard Durbin (Illinois, D) , Mary Landrieu (Louisiana, D, John Kerry (Massachusetts, D),Barbara Mikulski (Maryland, D) , Claire McCaskill (Missouri, D) , Robert Menendez (New Jersey, D), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York, D) , Jack Reed (Rhode Island, D), Pat Leahy (Vermont, D) , Maria Cantwell (Washington, D), Patty Murray (Washington, D).

I agree. However, for this to really work, you need all of the bishops of the pol's home state AND Washington DC as well. At that time, you'll hear the cries of the Church dabbling in politics, and the war escalates. The war has to escalate or we will have given Obama veto power over teh Church in our country.