Chicken Little Catholicism

There is a lot of Chicken Little Catholicism these days especially on the internet, facebook, etc. I don't know what is more prevelant these days: those that attack the Church from the outside or those Catholics who say they love the Church but the proverbial sky is always falling. Some Catholics have made quite a nice "cottage industry" of rallying like minded chicken littles and, in the name of Holy Mother Church, quite a handsome income too. Always cloaked in these "sky is falling" reports are code; you know the last 40 years, post Vatican II, liberals, the social justice crowd, the new Mass, etc., etc. The most consistent thing about chicken little Catholicism is that while it rails incessantly about all things falling apart, it offers very little hope, absolutely no joy, has no solutions(of course except to turn back the clock to say, oh, more than 40 years ago)states facts that never tell the whole story, often demonizes Pope's as long as they came after 1958, refers to the Catholic Church of America(did not know that even existed)(and I thought Catholic = universal) and they never, ever believe in meeting people where they are and bringing them to where they can be: intimately in love with Christ.

The chicken little internal attacks appear to have multiple layers of motivation; political, financial, territorial, even a we-win mentality. Last time I checked; we have our victory in Jesus Christ and the Church He established on earth. And when I did some checking; He was cool with establishing the Church with human beings who come in all shapes and sizes; warts and all. For His first Pope he picked Peter; he struggled with obedience and loyalty once. And Peter and Paul did not always agree(see Galatians chapter 2). My point: the Church has always had issues based on human weakness, blind ambition, sometimes outright corruption, run-away disobedience and guess what; this predates the last 40 years or so.

The chicken little internal attacks tells us that the Church is failing; has been failing. These sky falling Catholics must be contending that the Holy Spirit is no longer alive and working within His Church. These attacks of all that is wrong must be more powerful than the gates of hell; which Jesus told us would not prevail against His Church. Oh happy day that these folks no more than Jesus Himself! As an aside, this is the same crowd that might be in shock to learn that at the 1st Mass, the Lord's Supper, was not spoken in latin.

History should give us great hope that should be more than enough to sustain and inspire us. Can we look to the example's of how the Church; despite the Great Schism, continued to grow or after the mass exodus of those following Luther, Calvin, et. al., more converts were won in the New World than the Church lost in the old. How about today? I just saw a recent video by one of the chief chicken little that the Church is losing membership or some claim like that. The only thing that will bring it back, says he, is to jump the Bishops, cast off the last 40 years, reject social justice, and walk around 24/7/365 in sack cloth and ashes. Maybe the Church is not growing where he lives and works. I don't really know. In a world with over 6 billion souls and with more distractions than ever before; with some 30,000 competing Christian denominations, sects and sub-sects, the Catholic Church grows; now over 1.1 billion strong. Is every Catholic a faithful 100% lock-step with the Vatican Catholic: NO. And we can see that in every generation of the Church if you just read the saints, the Popes, the Church Fathers.

In the last 5 years, the net number of Priests serving Holy Mother Church has increased; INCREASED. Now much work must continue to be done in vocations; I'm encouraged as I have witnessed strong vocations from missionaries I have befriended from both Africa and India. And more than a few dioceses in America are seeing encouragement in vocations. And of course the chicken little leadership never, ever talks about the vocational fruit being produced by a healthy and growing permanent diaconate. Of course this is a Paul VI thing so maybe it's part of the 40 year dilema.

The Catholic Church today is growing in ministries too. She is more robust that ever in programs like prison ministry, hospice, lobbying governments for basic human rights, feeding the hungry, responding to the homeless and poor and IS the preeminent voice in the world for the unborn. She continues to proclaim the dignity of the family and marriage while teaching an unconvinced world of the dangers of artificial contraception, and immoral fertilization efforts. She defends vigorously those who are elderly and ill; decrying euthanasia and assisted suicide. You get the drift.

Before you attack this little blog piece; I've done this from my easy chair; no research, no staff notes, no picking up the Bible or the Catechism. Perhaps I should have before I hit "send". And please don't blow me off as naive. I'm plenty aware of the many problems the Church faces daily, and has faced for 2,000 not 40 years. Truth be told, the Church will survive because God wills it;not because we speak latin or not, we have Bishops full body slamming politcians in the communion line, or whatever else seems to produce mass indigestion for chicken little and those who see the sky falling. The Church survives because She is the bridegroom of Jesus Christ; and He loves Her and defends Her and we need to be more confident in Him. Yep, we will have Bishops, Priests, Deacons who disappoint us; even fail us. But the Church will NEVER fail.

And that's no LIE or FALSEHOOD! And I didn'teven use a pencil{:>)

(By the way; thats just my little smiley face; it ain't a satanic or new age symbol; really; you can look up now; it will be O.K.