January 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The following was submitted by a friend of LifeSiteNews who wants to remain anonymous. All events, names, characters, and incidents in this tale are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased) or places is intended or should be inferred.
John Lambert and Lucy Brown have just got engaged.
After a few weeks of excitement, they start dealing with practical things. They go to their local parish and speak to Father Bob. He happily signs them up to his marriage preparation course.
During the course, Father Bob tells the group some strange things about the purpose of marriage. At another point, he seems to suggest that contraception is a matter of conscience. But he also says that they could all use Natural Family Planning (NFP) to “space out the children” if they wanted to. In fact, he tells them that they must go to two NFP sessions run by a nun as a crucial part of their preparation.
At the NFP conferences, the nun talks in great detail – to a mixed audience of eight couples – about the sacramental acts of monitoring bodily fluids and functions, in order to avoid “breeding like rabbits.” One of the couples says that they will be doing NFP for the first couple of years, so that they can get used to being married.
Next, Father Bob sends them to the diocesan Day of Marriage Preparation. Many of the speakers are laypeople: one is divorced, another makes offhand comments in favor of same-sex marriage, and another passionately compares the Mass to the marital act. Several couples don’t even try to hide that they are already living together.
John knows his catechism, and is confused by this whole course of events. Why doesn’t Father Bob say anything? But he thinks these events are just hoops through which he has to jump in order to get married. He tries to be obedient and he trusts Father Bob. John tries to correct some of the funny ideas when talking to Lucy, but even with his knowledge of the Faith, sometimes he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
And really, how can a layman like John be expected to identify every single error he is being given, and to be able to explain why to his fiancée why each one is wrong?
Sometimes Lucy gets confused, and this makes her upset and they argue. John sounds so old-fashioned, but she can’t see where he’s wrong. She’s uneasy: how can John be right, and all these trusted authority figures wrong?
And really, why should Lucy be expected to believe her fiancé over the parish priest and diocesan-employed speakers?
…
Somehow, John and Lucy get through their marriage preparation. The wedding was the happiest day of their lives. A few months later, Lucy is pregnant with their first child. They are over the moon.
Two months before the birth of their little boy, John decides it’s time to arrange the baptism. He speaks to Father Bob after Mass, who happily signs him up for the Parents’ Baptism Preparation course. It starts a month and a half after the baby’s due date.
Again, John doesn’t know what to think. He knows that babies have to be baptized as soon possible, because otherwise they can only go to Limbo, where they’ll be happy knowing God through merely natural and indirect means. But to see God as he is and to be with him supernaturally in Heaven, they need to be baptized.
Also, John knows what baptism is and doesn’t understand why he has to go to a course about it. It seems a long wait, and anything could happen in that time.
He tells Lucy. She isn’t surprised: Some of her family waited six months or more before baptizing their children. She doesn’t like John’s argument, but again she can’t see how he’s wrong.
But anyway, she’s seven months pregnant, tired, and doesn’t want to think about these things.
…
Little Robert is born a month early. In due time, the Lamberts go to the course.
There are four other families. Father Bob gives a presentation on how baptism welcomes their children into the Christian community. He opens up the group for discussion.
The Lamberts are surprised to hear that they are the only couple with a child under a year old. Even Lucy hasn’t heard of people waiting three years to baptize their children.
John charitably assumes that they must have just converted. But Lucy knows that they have all been in the parish for years.
Father Bob asks each couple to explain why they want to have their children baptized. One couple parrots back what he said before and they are met with satisfied nods.
The second couple says that they want to feel close to God.
The third couple says that, although they probably won’t be married for a few years yet, they still want to bring up their child with good values.
The Lamberts start to feel stressed as their turn gets closer.
The fourth couple is very frank. All the other kids in the extended family are baptized, they say, and their parents have been putting on a bit of pressure.
All eyes then turn to the Lamberts.
John starts to speak.
But you see, Lucy has had a lot of down-time since they signed onto the course. She has been trying to work out whether her husband is a lunatic or actually right about all these things.
She has been reading some books that old Grandma Brown had had when she was a little girl. Lucy hasn’t told her husband, but she has decided that he has been right all along, and she has had enough. Before John can speak, she interrupts him.
“We’re baptizing Robbie because it’s ‘necessary to salvation, because without it we cannot enter into heaven.’”
Silence. One of the men blinks, as if Lucy had just barked like a dog.
“It says in the catechism that it washes us from original sin, and that ‘children who die without baptism, cannot enter heaven.’ We want Robbie to go to Heaven. Really, I don’t understand why we can’t just baptize our kids this week.”
John is shocked but delighted.
The priest clears his throat.
“It’s really important,” Father Bob says. “That we don’t impose our views of ‘Church’ on others. This is a welcoming space, and we are accompanying you as you enter this stage of your journey.”
“Hang on,” says one of the dads. “Who’s she to say when we should baptize our boys?”
“Where do they go if they don’t go to Heaven? I’ve never heard such bigoted rubbish,” says one of the mums. Her husband nods, virtuously.
“Bob, why didn’t you tell us this?”
“What’s original sin?”
“I don’t think people should be allowed to talk like this.”
Father Bob holds up his hand and addresses the group.
“All of your reasons for wanting to baptize your children are good, for you. But Lucy, you must understand that you are not the authority here. This kind of thing might be found on YouTube, but this is my church, and I will not have you upsetting people like this.”
John takes Lucy’s hand, and they leave.
…
The Lamberts don’t go back to Father Bob’s parish. Their friend put them in contact with Father Carven from the neighboring diocese, who agreed to baptize Robbie that weekend.
It was all going well until the moment of the baptism itself.
In her reading, Lucy had learnt how to do an emergency baptism, by pouring water over the head while saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” But Father Carven says, ‘Robert, we baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” She thinks that this is strange, but trusts that this good priest knows what he’s doing.
It isn’t until a few years later that Robbie’s godfather discovers that the Church has ruled this form of baptism to be invalid. He tells the Lamberts, and they find a priest to sort it out.
But they can’t believe this new level of betrayal. Their child had not even been baptized.
They can’t believe that Father Carven, who had helped them so much in one sense, had so fundamentally let them down in another.
…
Robbie grows, and gains some brothers and sisters.
He starts to ask his parents about things at Mass. His parents find themselves explaining why certain things in the sermon weren’t quite true, and why the way certain things that happened at Mass weren’t quite right.
The practice of religion is getting exhausting for the Lamberts.
…
Robbie is seven years old and approaching his First Holy Communion. The Lamberts attend Mass in a new parish, where things are done quite reverently. The sermons are good — but sometimes the parents still find themselves correcting things on the way home.
Over the years, John has realized that the parish priest has a very liberal understanding of certain moral issues. He’s surprised, as Father seems so conservative most of the time.
A week before the First Holy Communion, little Robbie has to go and make his First Confession with this priest.
Once again, John doesn’t know what to do. He thinks that he has safely navigated his confessions by disregarding any advice he knows to be wrong.
But will Robbie be able to do this? Knowing what he knows, is John really going to allow his son’s conscience to be formed by this priest?
…
Robbie is 11. Although the Lamberts both know and love the Faith, they’re happy to have Robbie in the Catholic school. They’re not natural teachers, and they are relying on the school to help convey the Faith. They have taken a backseat in his religious education.
One day, Lucy flicks through his religious education book. She is surprised at what she finds: lots about Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, and not much about the Catholic Faith.
She finds only one exercise on Catholicism: The teacher has told them to write about an area of Church teaching that they think should change.
Robbie has written about how he thinks that we should have women priests.
Lucy drops the book, sits down, and cries.
…
A few years later — after many angry letters — Robbie and his siblings have been pulled out of that school.
The time has come for Robbie to be confirmed. He is so excited that he is about to be made a true Soldier of Christ. He imagines himself as a knight, putting on the armor of God and suffering for his Lord.
A family in their network tells them about the upcoming Confirmations in the traditional Latin rite. The Lamberts are delighted. They’ve learnt their lessons from their previous sacramental courses.
The day of the ceremony arrives. They recognize some of the other families. Everyone is excited.
This year, the Bishops’ Conference has sent a diocesan auxiliary bishop to administer the sacrament. He gives his sermon, talking about coming of age, and making our own decision to be a Catholic. He says nothing about being a Soldier of Christ.
Robbie looks over at Lucy, disappointed. She had said that this would happen. They shake their heads.
A few months later, this bishop is promoted to be the Ordinary of a neighboring diocese. Within his first year there, he arranges an LGBT Mass.
…
Years pass. Robbie is at university. He and (most of) his siblings have kept the Faith.
The Lamberts now attend a parish with a dynamic young assistant priest. He is trying to move things in a conservative direction, one grain of incense at a time. The Lamberts think that they should support him by attending his Mass.
Lucy isn’t quite sure how attending his Mass supports him, and she misses going to that other parish. But she’s happy to be more rooted in their local area.
A couple there is getting married. The young man knows about the Lamberts’ struggles, and asks John for advice: Shouldn’t he raise his new family in that traditionalist parish in the city, which has orthodox priests, the old Mass and the old Catechism?
“It sounds nice,” says John, wisely. “And the old Mass is nice. But those groups have their own problems. We should stay in our local parish. Really, it’s all about the home. Look at our kids: we have raised them okay. Things aren’t as bad as those rad-trads say.”
John doesn’t know that every one of Robbie’s old friends from the Catholic school have left the Church, and that one of his daughters is secretly planning to move in with her boyfriend next month. Like his other daughter.
…
Robbie has spent eight years discerning a vocation, and has just been rejected by the diocesan seminary.
The vocations director (who later leaves the priesthood) tells Robbie that he is too rigid. He suggests that he moderate himself, or perhaps apply to that more conservative diocese in the north of the country.
…
John lies on his hospital bed. His sight has failed, and he can no longer move. He knows that he is about to see his Judge.
His life is stretched out before him like a beautiful tapestry — and yet it is marred here and there by rips and stains. He cringes with horror, longing to make things right.
He thinks back to the lay chaplain who had visited him last week. Is there a priest coming to hear his confession and anoint him?
Sure, John couldn’t speak since the stroke. But he could blink, or make some sign, that he was sorry for his sins — wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? He can’t remember when he last received Holy Communion. It must have been before the livestreaming started.
But no priest is coming: There’s a virus going around, and his bishop has banned hospital visits. And even before the virus, no visiting priest had ever offered to hear his confession in hospital anyway. And since the stroke, he could no longer request it.
He tries to tell God, one last time, that he’s sorry for his sins. His heart burns, wishing that he could hear, one last time, the words of Holy Absolution.
…
Young Deacon Robert Lambert is about to be ordained a priest. He lies face-down, while the Litany of Saints is sung around him.
He’s sad that his father couldn’t have lasted a few more years in order to see this day. He would be so proud.
Deacon Lambert thinks over his seminary training. He got through it by hiding his conservative religious practice, and looks forward to being himself again. He is ready for his new life.
It’s a shame that they’d spent so little time on St. Thomas and moral theology. It’s a shame that he’d been driven to study Latin in the evenings: Didn’t canon law require all seminarians to know Latin?
He thinks about all the private study he plans to do now that he is free. He hopes that he’ll have the time.
Deacon Lambert doesn’t realize it, but everything which he has learnt has been taught through the lens of Vatican II. He and his other crypto-conservative confrères often make jokes about Vatican II, but none of them realize that this Council mediates all that they know and say about the Faith. It’s how they have been formed.
They think that they’re rooted in tradition, but they only know these things through this lens. Really, they’re just rooted in Vatican II.
Deacon Lambert thinks that he knows where the gaps in his knowledge are. But the truth is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
And yet he will soon be running marriage preparation courses, baptism preparation courses, and all the rest, for people just like John Lambert and Lucy Brown.
Because Deacon Robert Lambert is about to start his new life as Father Bob.
…
My dear friend reading this sad story:
You don’t have to do this to yourself.
But if you are trying to exist as a Catholic in compromised structures,
YOU ARE THE MAN.
2 Kings (2 Samuel) 12.7