If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall go forth to battle? (1 Corinthians 14:8)
No one could accuse Nigel Farage, the founder of Britain’s Brexit Party, of giving an uncertain sound. In just six weeks, his new party went from nothing to outright victory in the elections for the toothless European “Parliament”. It is possible that no party anywhere in the world, ever, has ever gone from a standing start to victory in a national poll in just six weeks.
What the Irish Bishops should learn from the Farage phenomenon.
The Irish Bishops may care to study the Farage phenomenon and learn from it. He did well because, in plain, simple, forthright language he spelt out just one relentless message. Britain voted three years ago to leave the anti-democratic European Union, but the lamestream political parties have failed to do what the people voted for. We haven’t left.
The “Conservatives”, who are no longer in any recognizable sense conservative, and “Labour”, whose frankly Communist leadership no longer represents working people, cannot make up their minds on the fundamental question whether Britain should continue to belong to a sclerotic tyranny-by-clerk or should break free and become once again an independent, self-governing and free-trading nation. The people punished the once-major parties for their dithering on this surely straightforward point of democratic principle.
Complicit Silence.
Consider the Irish Bishops. When Pope Paul VI promulgated Humanae Vitae, six hard-Left “professors” at a leading Irish seminary openly and publicly gave scandal to the faithful by rebelling against the Church’s long-standing, immutable and infallible teaching that Thou Shalt Not Kill with contraceptives (many of which are abortifacient). Here, in full, is what the Bishops said about these wretches’ no doubt kindly-intended heresy: Nothing. Nil. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Uh-uh. Bupkis.
And what did the Irish Bishops do to protect seminarians from these six false prophets? You guessed it. They left them in place to corrupt the minds of future priests – and now, feebly, they tremble in miserable, ineffectual, futile silence as they reap what they have sown, and are compelled to watch their congregations inexorably draining away.
And what did the Irish Bishops do when the secular authorities and their media poodles began promoting the contradiction in terms that is so-called “gay” soi-disant “marriage”? Yup – or, rather, Nope. They did not stand up and say, in the plainest terms, that homosexuality is wrong because it is a lot more dangerous to its practitioners than smoking.
Instead – and I assure you I am not making this up – they issued a flatulent document falsely entitled ‘Amoris’, which said – I kid you not – that, although true marriage between a man and a woman was, well, a jolly good thing and all that, nonetheless – cross my heart and hope to dies, this is what these consecrated successors to the martyred Apostles actually wrote and published – homosexual liaisons provided “comfort” to their practitioners. As my 18th-century ancestors would have put it, “Bah! Pshaw!”
Not “comfort”, Your Graces – misery, disease and death. Why on Earth do the anointed ones not understand that the Church lists homosexuality as one of the four sins crying out to Heaven for vengeance not for some complex, mediaeval, outdated, obscure theological reason but because it hurts and then kills so very many who are tempted to indulge in it?
One fears it will not be long before the Bishops issue a statement entitled Vitae, in which they say that, although perhaps, possibly, just maybe, um, er, up to a point, human life is, sorta, kinda cool and all that, dudes, nonetheless baby-butchering provides “comfort” to the mothers of the slaughtered innocents (to say nothing of the profit to the butchers).
When I attended the launch of the Brexit Party in London, and then, just before the poll, the triumphant final rally at the Olympia stadium, it was evident that the party’s message had been meticulously focused on a single, clear, central word: democracy. Nigel Farage and his team had confined themselves to the single point that the people, in a referendum appointed by their elected representatives in the Mother of Parliaments, had voted to cease to be a mere unconsidered, overtaxed satrapy of the Belgian Empire, but that, three full years later, the appalling Juncker and the dreadful Tusk were still expensively lording it over us.
Preach ye upon the Housetops:
Here, then, is some urgent advice respectfully offered to the Bishops, not only in Ireland but worldwide. Like Nigel Farage, get out on to the rooftops and proclaim the Gospel not of retread communism and militant secularism, as now, but of the Lord of Life. Focus your message on a single, clear, central word: love. What’s not to understand about the commandment “Thou shalt love”?
The Church opposes homosexuality and, therefore, gloomy not-marriage because she loves homosexuals enough not to want them to come to harm. She opposes divorce because she loves the couples and their children enough to know that a firm, unwavering and permanent mutual affection and devotion is best for them all, and best for us all.
She opposes abortion because she loves the little innocents enough not to want to see them tortured, dismembered and thrown away in bits, and she loves their mothers enough to comfort them if, after an abortion, they suffer post-abortive trauma, or to offer the little ones a loving home if their mothers cannot cope.
Hate the sin but love the sinner – so goes the old adage. Of course the hate-filled hard Left, the chief promoters of divorce, contraception, homosexuality and abortion, will accuse us of hate-speech when we point out that all such insane deviancies from family life and love are harmful – and especially harmful to the very people who think they will benefit from them.
Nevertheless, we neither hate anyone nor recommend that anyone should be hated. It is the bounden duty of the Bishops to cease behaving on moral questions with the intellectually inadequate indecisiveness and egregiously elaborate equivocation exhibited by Britain’s two now-collapsing major political parties on the political question to Brex or not to Brex.
Once the Bishops have taken the time and trouble to explain that it is love, not hatred, that leads them to speak out no less plainly than their fathers in the faith against the moral evils of our day, they will find themselves heeded and respected once again, as those from whom they received their office were respected.
It is no accident that the traditional Catholic churches are packed to the doors, while those led by the whifflers and wafflers are empty. Let the Bishops take note that the faithful are voting with their feet, and let them reform themselves. Let the Trumpet of Love give a clarion-call.
Their Graces might well start by withdrawing and pulping the unfortunate Amoris document. As for you, gentle reader, please make sure you attend the next Lumen Fidei conference on these and suchlike subjects. Be there or be square! In the meantime, thou shalt love.
