“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church… must take up.” Karol Cardinal Wotyla (Sept. 1976)

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Notre Dame: Who are the Crazy Ones?

About one year ago, I was corralling my kids and trying to push them through the front door of my Church for 9:30AM Sunday Mass. Suddenly, over my shoulder I saw a very unkempt man with a long beard and equally long hair. He was completely disheveled and on first appearance you would think something was wrong with him. He could have easily passed for someone who may not have been all there, or maybe even homeless. I remember positioning my small children within my reach, as my paternal instinct told me to do as this man walked into the Church ahead of us.

Upon entering the church, he slowly genuflected down on one knee in the center aisle at the back of the Church. He did not stop there, however. He, in sequence, went down on the other knee, then put his palms on the floor, finally laying his cheek to the ground in a sign of absolute reverence of being in the presence of the Eucharist in the tabernacle. After seeing this overwhelming sign of respect and affection, I thought to myself maybe everyone else in their well-kept appearances waiting for Mass to start (the chatting school mothers, the joking ushers, the bulletin readers (personally, guilty as charged)) were the "crazy" ones and this vagabond-appearing man was the normal one who actually understood the situation. It was a very contrarian thought and a very eye-opening one.

There were four Notre Dame protesters (the liberal media calls them hecklers to minimize their impact) who could not contain themselves on Sunday when an institution dedicated to Our Blessed Mother honored the most militant pro-abortion leader in our land for his record on civil rights and humanitarian achievements. The overwhelming hypocrisy was apparently too much to ask these people to remain silent or to be controlled. They would implode if they watched anymore of this intense outrage. An individual - who voted for withholding any type of life-saving help for a defenseless baby who survived a botched abortion and was now breathing on his/her own - was making his own, personal beachhead in the jewel of Roman Catholic higher education.

A master of rhetoric was using his deceptive tools on a Catholic stage to fool even more multitudes of less discerning people all orchestrated by a co-conspirator who was priest of the Holy Cross. A priest who smiled mesmerized in pictures with him as a little leaguer would do in a picture with Alex Rodriguez.

As they escorted these four individuals out - each of whom truly deserved the name of the school's heritage, “the Fighting Irish”- most in the crowd showed their disapproval of their actions with "boos" and "hisses".

To parallel the above story, I believe these four were the normal ones who completely understood what the situation was at hand, and the other 10,000 people were the ones who didn’t understand, or care to understand, what was happening or the intensity of the moment. If they did, their numbers would have been in direct reciprocal of Sunday's result. Obama would not have been able to speak one word at the podium because he would have been drowned out by 10,000 voices attenuating the Hail Mary.

As these protesters are made in His Image, even our God fiercely capsized the money-changing tables at the Temple when the level of outrage, sacrilege and hypocrisy became too much for even Divinity to cope with. The scene of the scorn was not a Temple, but it was a House of God - - our beloved Notre Dame -- and a sacred place to many where these four honorably tried to overturn the tables.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. (Ephesians 5:11)

No comments: