Cri De Coeur: "What Next?" After Which, Fr. Z Rants.

Fr Zed with advice on the current situation in the Church, to pray for those who hate Tradition.

From Fr Z's Blog

From a reader in reaction to the dialogue between Francis and Jesuits in Bratislava.  HERE

I had closed the combox on that post.  My correspondent, a long-time… loooongitime reader and very knowledgeable about the state of the Church in these USA said, “Better to keep the combox closed” and added this…

See if it doesn’t strike a chord.  Edited for anonymity.

I am starting to feel like Jonah, who complained that God took away the shade tree that grew over him. So now the Pope is going after EWTN– which, while solidly orthodox, is hardly the fringe right that some might like to portray it as being. What next? A condemnation of one of the four Gospels? I’m getting to the point where I can’t even stomach Catholic news any more much less secular news. I get the sense that the Pope is engaged in a nasty game of baiting the orthodox in an attempt to trap them into doing something stupid– and many will eagerly jump into the trap.

What a tightrope we walk these days. Perhaps the example of Jesus before Pilate is the best to follow for now for most of us.

Yes, “they win” to some extent, but we have to believe that Jesus has a plan– a grander plan than anything that Satan can concoct and certainly grander than anything you or I could develop.

[…]

I really feel bad for good orthodox priests these days. I’m not under nearly the pressure that many of you must be and I find myself muttering to myself all day and wondering how long before the stress does me in. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t work for a tiny company that mostly flies under the radar where I can escape the worst of the nonsense that is going on these days.

Try to hang in there. You and I may yet live long enough to see the beginnings of a reversal.

When I was young, I thought that GM would always be around, but that “old” GM stock is worthless today. The Soviet Union seemed as if it was indestructible, but today it is but a memory and Eastern Europe is free of Soviet domination.

There will be a day when people talk about the collapse of China and the liberation of those subjugated by China. God may yet have a miracle in store to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from overrunning the West, though I’m not sure that we deserve such a miracle.

There are any number of things and any amount of sufferings that seemed as if they would never end or go away, but only God can make the claim of being all-powerful and ever-living.

Others can but pretend for a while, like Ozymandias.

No matter how badly those who oppose a whole, integrated understanding of Tradition will drive and harass us, we have to strive not to hate them (as many of them do hate us) and pray for their conversion by whatever means God’s knows will work.   We want as many people as possible to have the happiness of Heaven, even those who treat us badly.  This earthly life is brief, and so whatever it is that they might need for their benefit would be short compared to the unending bliss of the Beatific Vision.  The same applies to us.

We have to examine ourselves carefully and purify our loves.

O God, lover of and guardian of peace and charity: to all our enemies grant peace and true charity; and give to them the remission of all their sins, and mightily snatch us away from their plots.