Renew The Church! – website and Blog

One year ago after the surprising, stunning upset of the presidential election of Donald Trump, I wrote a blog post of my thoughts. I was grateful to God, to the point of tears in my praise and relief and thanksgiving! I had seen much of the America I grew up in, slipping away under increasingly “progressive” godless and man-centered secular ideology – that is, Big Government take-over of more and more of America, leaving less and less of all that had made this nation good in the past, and thus in many senses “great.”

Many Americans in that election cycle knew, in their hearts, that something deep and fundamental had become wrong in America – and needed to be set right. Politicians on both sides of our two-party, three-branch system of government had found ways to deadlock true governance of the country while at the same time assuring their re-elections and self-advancing careers. It had become a “swamp” – and “Drain the Swamp” became a rallying cry for this non-politician, questionably a Republican, ignore-the-rules candidate for President – and he won.

I wrote one year ago, in the blog America: Is This One Last Chance?, and it is true now as then: “Yes I believe it was a miracle! I believe God intervened because of the prayers of His faithful ones.” The following is from that blog post:

Do you know how close we came to losing this nation – to putting this nation of laws, with a Constitution to protect us and our human rights, into the hands of lawless Judges who feel free to make up laws and rights as they see fit? Do you know how close we still are to falling so far from “One nation under God” to a fragmented, shattered confederation of hostile tribes and identity groups under an all-powerful federal rule by whim and imperial fiat? The Lord has been very patient with us, His Church, as the darkness of the world around us continued to grow only darker.

I believe this, however, concerning the Church: He is giving His Church one more chance. He is God and I am not, and I don’t know that I personally would have given us another chance, so prodigal have we been with our blessings. But He is God and He has given us this one more chance to be who we are, and to be what we are sent to be: Light! We are sent to be His holy light in this dark world.

Where has the Church been, through the decades when this nation was in such grave moral decline? The nation morphed from a culture of life to a culture of death – from a predominantly Judeo-Christian nation to a predominantly materialistic and godless one. The light of revealed truth – even the light of the natural moral law – has been receding, dimming, fading into the horizon while an amoral darkness has begun to envelop the country. Barbarism, cruelty, animal-like inhumanity has crept in. And where has the Church been, as this enemy of souls was infiltrating every facet and corner of America?

What has the Church been doing, instead of her holy mission? Whom has she been serving, when she was not serving her Lord and God? What have our parishes and pulpits been occupied with, when they were not occupied with the upbuilding of her people in holiness, and nurturing them toward the fulness and the maturity of Christ?

Has the Church learned anything, this past year? Has the Church changed her sleepy lukewarmness, her unnatural treaty with the world and the loves of the world, her shameless counterfeiting and compromising of her mission to “make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”? I see no evidence. I see rearranging the furniture and lowering the shades, lest too much light come in. I hear no wailing with grief at the interior ruination of His Holy City, the hunger of His people abandoned, the CEO bishops, the manager-priests, the preachers reading their mail-order homilies, the shameful excuses for adult formation if and where any at all even exists. Church, will you dare to tempt God, even after He has given you this time to repent?

Isaiah heard this from the Lord, many years ago. It seems relevant to us now:

Isa 66:1  Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?
Isa 66:2  All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.
Isa 66:3  “He who slaughters an ox is like him who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like him who breaks a dog’s neck; he who presents a cereal offering, like him who offers swine’s blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like him who blesses an idol. These have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations;
Isa 66:4  I also will choose affliction for them, and bring their fears upon them; because, when I called, no one answered, when I spoke they did not listen; but they did what was evil in my eyes, and chose that in which I did not delight.”

I will close this post, with the same paragraph I closed with, one year ago:

The more pressing question is, what will we do now? Will we seek holiness, as is our vocation? Will we be light, as is our mission? Will we be witnesses, as we are sent to be, of His life-giving Spirit? Will we see the one door open before us – the door that may be the last chance we will have – to seek His will and do it? Will we pray with all our hearts to do His will no matter the cost? Will we offer Him all that He has entrusted to us, in hope that He may use it, and us, for the glory of His work in this His creation? Thy Kingdom come, Father! Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name.

Amen.