Just about ten years ago, I was working with a priest (whose name I shall not disclose) based in the Archdiocese of Boston. This priest was and still is stationed in a remote area of Massachusetts with a small church, but his church was always overflowing with parishioners. People would come to him from long distances just to work with him because not only did he always try to help men with their spiritual and material needs, but he willingly offered to help as he could with difficult cases.
If you are from New England and especially the Boston area and you are a faithful Catholic (as we strive here to be at Shoebat.com), then you are aware of two things- (a) the massive decline of the Catholic Faith following the Vatican II council in 1965, and the apostasy of many of the Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. What was once possibly the most Catholic major city in the USA has become a cesspool of heresy, hedonism, and anti-clericalism.
The reasons for this decline are many, but as the journalist Philip Lawler notes in his classic, ground-breaking work The Faithful Departed: The Collapse Of Boston’s Catholic Culture, the decline of the Church in Boston began with priests and bishops who, instead of following the teachings of the Church, chose to try and fit Church teachings to the times. Instead of standing strong with the Faith, they chose instead to ignore teachings or in some cases, outright lie in order to create an impression that was more favorable to American society. This was called by Pope Leo XIII as the heresy of Americanism:
The scriptures teach us that it is the duty of all to be solicitous for the salvation of one’s neighbor, according to the power and position of each. The faithful do this by religiously discharging the duties of their state of life, by the uprightness of their conduct, by their works of Christian charity and by earnest and continuous prayer to God. On the other hand, those who belong to the clergy should do this by an enlightened fulfillment of their preaching ministry, by the pomp and splendor of ceremonies especially by setting forth that sound form of doctrine which Saint Paul inculcated upon Titus and Timothy. But if, among the different ways of preaching the word of God that one sometimes seems to be preferable, which directed to non-Catholics, not in churches, but in some suitable place, in such wise that controversy is not sought, but friendly conference, such a method is certainly without fault. But let those who undertake such ministry be set apart by the authority of the bishops and let them be men whose science and virtue has been previously ascertained. For we think that there are many in your country who are separated from Catholic truth more by ignorance than by ill-will, who might perchance more easily be drawn to the one fold of Christ if this truth be set forth to them in a friendly and familiar way.
From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.
There are many parts of this heresy, but the part I would like to focus on here is the issue of marriage and the family.
The Catholic Church teaches that the family is the central, basic, and most important unit of society, as it is both a micro-society unto itself and it is out of the family that the society grows. As the family grows in and retains strength so does society grow and retain strength, and as the family declines, so does the society decline. There is a direct relationship between the family and society which cannot be separated.
While there have always been problems in society with the family in every age, the American family has been under particular assault beginning with the late 19th and early 20th century with the introduction of (a) birth control and (b) feminism. Both ideas during this time were in their early stages, but the results were already clear, as noted by the eugenicist societies of those times. Simply put, the use of birth control was the first step to government-sponsored murder of “undesirable” groups in society, and feminism was the first step to destroying the family by forcibly inverting naturally-ordained biological roles that permanently re-define and taint natural relations between men and women.
There were many people and groups who supported these ideas, including many Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, and who did so for either reasons of ignorance or malice. However, it remains that the Catholic Church always was and continued to be the main bloc and in practice, obstacle to the forcing of these anti-human, eugenicist, perverted ideas on American society. Among many examples, when most Protestant churches accepted birth control beginning in the 1930s, the Catholic Church was still the only one to formally and publicly oppose it. During the 1960s with the advent of the birth control pill, the Catholic Church was still the largest and many times, only church opposing it with Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. When during the 1990s some Protestant congregations went so far as to permit abortion, not only was the Catholic Church consistently against it, but it was and still remains the majority of people and groups involved in the struggle against abortion. This was and remained in spite of how throughout the same 20th century, there was a visible decline in morals and Faith in the West that defies natural explanation across all Christian denominations in the West which spared no one and continues to do so through our current day.
What we are seeing today with the rise of evil, deviant groups and ideas such as Islam and homosexuality on a mass scale are advanced manifestations of the cultural decline and, if not stopped, impending death of Christianity in the West. And by death I do not speak of a wholly “natural” death as in a decline, but rather I speak of an intentional extermination legislated into the government and enforced by the members of society acting upon the same legislation in the name of following the law.
My priest friend from Boston that I referenced above preached publicly in his sermons about two things which got him into trouble with hierarchy in the archdiocese. First, was he preached actual Catholic teachings and not heresy. The second, which got him in even more trouble, was a warning about the tax exempt status of the Church and in reality, all Christian congregations in America. In his words, he said that Christians of all denominations are very much dependent on the tax-exempt status which the IRS “deems” (which is immoral unto itself) to churches, and how in the not distant future (this is around 2006, mind you), the government will start telling churches they must disobey or change certain core moral teachings and if they don’t they will lose their tax exempt status, effectively stripping them of most of their ministries and properties. He regularly added this would happen through court rulings on the legalization of homosexual unions, and that priests and bishops would be forced either to apostatize or go to jail for it.
I mention this in reference to a ruling yesterday by a federal judge which blocks state clerks from citing religious differences in refusing to issues a license for two homosexuals to get “married”:
Mississippi clerks cannot cite their own religious beliefs to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, under a ruling a federal judge handed down Monday.
The effect of the ruling by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves is that the state can’t enforce part of a religious objections bill that was supposed to become law Friday.
Reeves is extending his previous order that overturned Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage. He says circuit clerks are required to provide equal treatment for all couples, gay or straight. He also said that all 82 circuit clerks must be given formal notice of that requirement.
Mississippi’s religious objections measure, House Bill 1523 , was filed in response to last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide. That ruling is called the Obergefell case, after the man who filed it.
“Mississippi’s elected officials may disagree with Obergefell, of course, and may express that disagreement as they see fit — by advocating for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision, for example,” Reeves wrote Monday. “But the marriage license issue will not be adjudicated anew after every legislative session.”
Attorneys were still waiting on rulings from Reeves in two other lawsuits that seek to block all of the religious objections law, including provisions that could affect schools’ bathroom policies for transgender students.
The precedent this ruling sets is very dangerous, as briefly stated it established that (a) government dictate trumps religious convictions even if it means committing a grave moral wrong, and (b) the law is established in the public sphere. If you are a Christian who places the law of God over the government dictates in the issuing of marriage licenses, you will suffer as a white martyr- i.e. lose your job, go to jail, or suffer another measure per a federal government ruling.
The other issue, and the bigger one is the establishment of this as a law in the public sphere. What happens in the public area ultimately is forced upon the private- just as political decisions follow economic changes, so does private industry follow public policy. Now that homosexual unions cannot be denied in the public sphere on a federal level, it is only a matter of time before the same comes to the private sphere.
What this means for you, fellow Christian, is that you will have to make a choice soon as well as your church. If your church refuses to tolerate homosexual unions, then your church will lose its tax exempt status. This will affect all Christians, but the biggest group it will affect in America are Catholics. Just as King Henry VIII of England illegally stole England’s churches and monasteries and used them for his own personal gain, after which he destroyed many of them, and just as the Bolsheviks did the same to the Orthodox Churches in Russia and the Catholic Church in Ukraine, so will this happen to Catholic and Protestant in America over the issue of sodomy. It is the manifestation of the heresy of Americanism in its full form, where the absolute obedience to a particular policy is the measure by which a religion is deemed “worthy” to exist in society and the government holds and withdraws favors from it as it pleases.
If you are a Christian, you are not liked.
Expect more rulings about this from the courts in the next few years, and watch carefully, as it is very likely that before 2020 we just may see the above come to pass. Prepare yourselves, for one day you may have to choose either to support homosexual unions and be allowed to exist in society, or to reject them and suffer personal economic and social loss.