Madness

In today's readings for Morning Prayer, we hear about the situation when St. Paul was speaking to Agrippa about the gospel, and Agrippa says to him, "Paul, you are mad". The translators of the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition are using the word "mad" in its proper defintion -- "insane" -- not the misuse of the word to mean "angry". That is how Agrippa (and most of the world) sees the Catholic faith: insane.

When those within the Church fall into this demonic viewpoint, they do not sit idly by and just allow things to continue. Under the influence of the "evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls" they try to change things. Some (like so-called theologians) write books that claim various lies already are Catholic teaching (and the poorly catechized often fall for it--I have met many of these and helped them out of this quagmire). Others (like modernist priests) merely do this by misleading their people, and teaching errors in the pulpit (a common practice today). Still others (like Bishops -- especially those in Germany) attempt to force the Church to change her theology.

Each of these is wrong, but the Bishops are committing one of the gravest sins. In reality, they are "mad". You can no more change eternal truth than you could change the personhood of God. Anyone who says the Church needs to change morality has lost touch with reality. Morality cannot change. God declared adultery a sin; it is a sin; it cannot become a righteous deed because a number of mad Bishops take a vote.

If anyone says "the Church needs to update her teachings" or "the Church should get with the times", that person cannot be trusted. It does not matter if it is a Bishop, a religious, or a layman. They are not living lives of faithfulness to the Church, they are not showing love for Christ, they are in a state of complete confusion and "madness". The truths of God may look like madness to a world immersed in demonic foolishness, but this is not the first time that happened. St. Paul stood fast in the truth and turned the Roman Empire upside down. Let us stand fast and we too can see the great work of God in our day.