(LifeSiteNews) – Some revolutionary politicians used to remind us: “Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” And Naomi Klein, whose criticism of disaster capitalism my husband once honored, recently claimed in light of the purported threat of a climate crisis: “This changes everything.”
A promotional text for her book of that same title expounds:
Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It’s about changing the world—before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe.
Either we leap—or we sink.
At the same time, it seems that God has a similar way of talking to us, yet with very different goals.
He lets a crisis in society and in the Church take place so that mankind can amend its ways and find its way back to Him. Just as in our personal lives, it sometimes takes a shocking event to wake us up and change our ways.
I personally think that this is right now happening in Church and society.
And so let us hope we are at a threshold to something much better than what we have gotten used to.
I have learned much from the intellectually honest Dr. Robert Malone, the original inventor of the mRNA vaccine, who is a critic of the current corona policies. He says that the last two years have “changed everything,” to pick up Klein’s motto. He once retweeted a liberal’s tweet, which went, in its substance, like this: here we liberals thought that Donald Trump would usher in a dictatorship, only to wake up and realize that it was our Democratic governors. Malone described himself in an interview with LifeSite’s Jim Hale as “center-left,” but in his honesty, he could not go along with what some of the Democratic policies have become: means of limiting fundamental civil freedoms.
Dr. Malone is not alone. Many people have been shaken by the ease with which politicians were willing to cut down our freedoms. (Nota bene: some of us are also astonished how Donald Trump continues supporting the vaccines.)
When we are at a moment in history where our very own liberties are at stake, “this changes everything,” I would say. We need to re-arrange our thoughts and look at the priorities that emerge from this moment in history.
When recently speaking with Jeanne Smits, my colleague at LifeSite, she brought up the image her mentor Jean Madiran liked to use: when a house is on fire, you welcome any firefighter who is willing to come put down the fire.
Is our world not now effectively on fire? And what of our Church?
What does this motto mean for our time?
The motto would mean this: let us now pull together all the forces of men of good will, so that we may be able to stop this “global tyranny,” in Dr. Malone’s words, that is in the middle of taking us over. Once we have halted this assault, and our freedoms are restored, we can be more at leisure again to debate worldviews or ecclesial differences.
A priest-friend of mine put it this way: “Basically men of the Church and state are attacking the most fundamental truths and our most fundamental rights according to the natural and the supernatural law and we must rally around these basic truths and then build up from there.” He continued: “we must unite in these truths and defend our rights. We have the right to bodily integrity and informed consent and cannot be morally coerced to enter into a medical experiment against our will. If we do not win this battle and are disabled by the injection or forced into poverty by the mandates there will be no leisure to discuss the finer points of politics. We have the right to the traditional Sacraments and the Mass of all time and if we lose this battle we will be spiritually disabled and impoverished and thus unable to work for the restoration of the Church.”
As a German, I feel reminded of a stirring set of words written by a Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, in light of his experience under Hitler:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a CommunistThen they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a JewThen they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
The way I would like to put it: let us first all battle for regaining or maintaining our fundamental freedoms, and then we even have a future possibility to continue our other debates. When we wind up living in a quasi-Chinese-Communist system, there will be no debates anymore at all.
The same applies to the Church situation. In the last months, I came to be in contact with Catholics with different backgrounds, united in the objections against a vaccination program that seemed morally and scientifically most objectionable. In the face of a looming vaccination mandate, and in the face of a papacy that, without differentiation and distinction, pushes Catholics to get vaccinated, it is important to work together. Here, too, we need to first fight to regain our fundamental principles of freedom and health before we can continue our (important) debates about theological or other differences.
Yes, both in state and Church, what the opponent generally likes to do is to sow division. He likes to taint a large movement by pointing to one individual group or person, as if they are taking over the movement. Are we not now all either smeared as “white supremacists” by the state, or “fundamentalists” in the Church? (This is, of course, the Marxist tactic of class or race warfare – divide and conquer.)
Here, I must come back to Dr. Malone. Another thing he taught – and here he is learning from Professor Mattias Desmet – is the importance of building communities. As soon as we get to know each other and build up trust, the enemy cannot easily isolate us and discourage us. We actually start exchanging information, facts, experiences, which in turn enrich our own view of the current situation.
Therefore: let us build communities! Local ones, national ones, international ones. Let us, in the words of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, build an “anti-Globalist Alliance.”
What is going on now in the Church is also a very isolating thing: with Traditionis Custodes, traditional Catholics who love the traditional rite, usus antiquior, in its Mass and Sacraments, are being ostracized, repressed. The goal here, too, is to isolate them and to exclude them from communities.
Will we allow our opponent to reach that goal, or are we going to follow the Plan of God which surely is to unite Catholics of good will and mend our ways?
What if God uses Pope Francis as a tool to bring us all together?
There are Catholics from diocesan parishes who love the traditional Mass so much that they are at a loss where to go from here. There are the Ecclesia Dei communities who seem to be determined to remain loyal to Tradition and there is the Society of St. Pius X with its vast organization; there are individuals such as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Bishop Athanasius Schneider who are such strong voices for the truth and tradition. Will we be able, by God’s Grace, to forget past (serious and understandable) disagreements, for the good of the Church, for the good of the weak and insecure, for the good of so many souls at stake? And now, it should actually be easier for many to come together.
In a sense, it is now for many a “Lefebvre moment,” as Peter Kwasniewski just put it, when he wrote: “It will be, in short, a ‘Lefebvre Moment’ for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, and any other such bodies.”
“The only honorable response they can make,” the liturgy expert continued, “is: Non possumus—we cannot, in good conscience, comply with these prescriptions. Throw at us any penalties or punishments you wish; we will ignore them all, because they will have no force. A future pope will vindicate us, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI did with adherents of tradition decades ago.”
All these groups should now come together, help each other out and build networks in order to provide the Sacraments of Tradition. For, when we build a loose federation or union – or, as it now happened in France, an association of those wish to remain loyal to the missal of St. Pope Pius V – would not many Catholics feel assured that there is no schismatic spirit, but, rather, that there is a strong ecclesial community willing to stand together for Tradition?
If this would be possible, Pope Francis would have given us such a great gift, just as the current corona crisis has given us the great gift of meeting so many fine medical doctors who are willing to give their all in defense of health and human dignity.
For me and my family that means: would I have ever met Dr. Robert Malone and his wife?
Yes, this changes everything, and let us make sure we make the best of it.
And let us trust Our Lady who is on our side, always guiding us in difficult times. Encouraging is the rapid spread, since the end of November, of the rosary rallies that are taking place now on Wednesdays in numerous European places, inspired by Austria, but now spreading to Germany, Switzerland, Italy (and now even to the U.S.). Louis-Pierre Laroche, a father of 11 children who started this initiative in Austria, was very little connected and just thought to do something about the current corona crisis. He told LifeSite that this rapid spread of the Rosary campaign is a sign that “I am merely a small tool of the Blessed Mother to re-kindle throughout the world the devotion to her. I have no control over that.”
Thus, let us all be tools of Our Lady for the healing of our world.
May the Christ-Child and His Mother, together with His foster father, bless us all and bring us anew that hope that only He can give.
A blessed Christmas!