Dealing With Betrayal

There was a time when an oath meant something. Every Council Father at VII had sworn the Oath Against Modernism. A lot of good that did!

From Catholicism

By Charles Coulombe, KCSS

Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you
—Billy Joel

IF there is a single word that sums up the world in which we live, it is betrayal. In Church and State, oaths mean nothing; the powerful prey upon the weak — and the bleakness of our situation was dumped well and truly in our faces by COVID. I have written recently in these pages about the many institutions in New England alone which have forsaken their original, sane — albeit WASP — roots to become WOKE. Multiply this literally across the planet, and you have a disgusting chronicle of betrayal. Often enough, the WOKE-ing of such an institution includes a ritual denunciation for racism, sexism, speciesism, planetism, galaxyism, or whatever other sparkly nugget of abuse has captured the little minds of the current management, of the founder or founders of said institution. But whether a school, museum, learned society, or some such other organisation, honest, non-hypocrites would resign their positions and salaries, and build anew after their own precious ideas. But such are rarely to be found among the WOKE in power. This betrayal is not limited to the founders, of course, but also to all those who have faithfully supported the institution — down to current members who joined because they agreed with the original vision.

Still, the evil of betrayal grows, the higher up the food chain one proceeds. In government, it is far worse — not least because said betrayal is at the financial expense of those betrayed. When King Charles III succeeded his mother, across Britain and the Commonwealth there were accession proclamations made by various political figures in sonorous language, speaking of the mercy of God and loyalty to the new Sovereign. But so many of those making these proclamations were republicans and atheists; it really is a wonder the words did not choke in the mouths of some of them. Of course, in our own country the same might be said for any number of oath-takers swearing to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

But bad as betrayal in the State is, it is far worse still in the Church — the unique institution created to make Salvation possible for the human race. Canon 1752 speaks of “the salvation of souls, which must always be the supreme law in the Church.” One does not need to be an historian to notice that for a number of decades, that has often appeared to be the opposite of reality as Catholics must live it. In a wide number of ways, it has often seemed to be the ruin of souls that any of our ecclesiastical masters are going for. We shall return to this momentarily.

For most of us, however, betrayal on these levels is simply something we must live with, about which we can do little save complain. But there is another level of betrayal: personal. We can lie or be lied to, cheat or be cheated by those we know personally. There is a reason why the divorce rate climbs ever higher. Child molestation is such a horrid crime not only because of the corruption of innocence, which surely cries to Heaven for vengeance, but because it usually involves the betrayal of a young person by someone whom he had good reason to trust. Far less of a crime is the failure of a friend to help a friend — but it still involves betrayal on some level. It is in the personal sphere — and the personal sphere only — in which most of us have the opportunity to create the kind of world we would like to see.

It falls to each of us to be the kind of spouse, parent, older mentor, and/or friend that we believe everyone else should be. Key to this is the virtue of loyalty. Now loyalty cannot be blind or unquestioning — indeed, sometimes loyalty to a friend requires admonishing him about one sin or another. But here one must be very careful that it is love of the friend that motivates one, rather than a desire to feel superior.

I am mentioning this because it often happens that betrayal by our betters can filter down into our own lives — and I do not merely mean the suffering we endure at their hands. We each of us must somehow live with what those in control in Church and State do to us. Life and people being what they are, our reactions and the reactions of those whom we hold dear shall not always be the same. Often enough, these differences can poison our personal relationships, as we and those of our friends and family with whom we differ clash ever more frequently over the issues our betters present us with. What gets lost in all of this is that very frequently (though not always) it is not basic principles we are fighting over, but particular applications — prudential judgements, if you will. Our tempers and our temperatures rise, and we thrill to the endorphins anger releases. Oh, the thrill of being right! But apart from the fact that we may not be, there is also the fact that ultimately we may be losing a relation or loved due purely to the actions of an authority figure who could care less whether we live or die. In other words, in addition to the initial betrayal of his office by his evil measures, he adds to it by adding pointless dissensions between his subjects.

Let me give a concrete example from life. When I was young, the New Mass came in, and Paul VI demanded compliance. Leaving aside the illegalities or otherwise of his actions, I wish to concentrate on the actual results on the personal level. It was, to put it mildly, division. Some believed that the Latin Novus Ordo was all that one should want; hence the birth of the Latin Liturgy Association. Others struggled to retain the Traditional Mass, through such organisations as Una Voce. Archbishop Lefebvre went so far as to risk the charge of schism with the foundation of the Society of St. Pius X. Some warned darkly that the mistranslation “for all” in the words of consecration invalidated the vernacular Novus Ordo. Others held that it was all the work of antipopes, and that since the death of Pius XII the Chair of St. Peter is vacant. Friendships were broken and families split over the matter — as symbolised by the august Matt clan, longtime owners/publishers of the Wanderer. The refusal of brother Walter to accept the New Mass led to his leaving the family journal and starting The Remnant. In some perfectly orthodox quarters (doctrinally speaking) mere yearning for the TLM was seen as a sign of “schismatic tendencies.” Fortunately, that was put to rest by John Paul II’s 1985 “indult,” and the emergence of “approved Latin Mass communities” after 1988.

But what impressed me about all this — above the actual issues involved — was one simple truth. Laymen should not have had to worry about any of these things. The fact that they were forced to was the result of an amazing amount of betrayal on the part of the hierarchy. But I resolved then that I was not going to allow the views of anyone I knew in these areas to alienate me — unless of course dogma were involved. After all, I might be wrong, even as St. Vincent Ferrer backed an anti-Pope; and even if I were right as could be about an issue, what good was it if my “rightness” stimulated such nastiness in me as to drive a sincere Catholic away from the Faith, to say nothing of my friendship.

Why do I bring up all this ancient history? Well, after two decades of progress in regaining Tradition, the current Pontificate and many of the Bishops are once again bringing back the nonsense of the 1960s and 70s — once more forcing laity, clergy, and religious alike to make choices they should never have to make. In a word, after a short respite, we are back to hierarchical betrayal. As before, this will again poison personal relationships if we allow it to. So, we must make a determined effort not to damage our personal spheres at the whims of those above us. It is bad enough that they have the power they misuse so badly. Why should they be given further power over our very lives?

Instead, as they force us into ever more unpalatable choices, let us not turn those who make different responses than we into enemies. Let us pray that they see things as we do — and that we ourselves are in the right. Let us aim our impatience and enmity not at our fellow sufferers, who are as confused and removed from the exercise of power as we, but at our masters who have put us all in this position. And then let us pray for them; the devil is behind all of this, and he never treats his tools well after death, if they join him. Let us do our best to avoid the hatred and despair which he seeks to rouse in us through his human — and often unknowing — allies. After all, we ourselves have allied with him whenever we have fallen into mortal sin. May we, our friends and relations, yes, and our rulers, ecclesiastical and civil, ever find our way back to God, as often as we fall.