Why am I quoting a Papist who is fulminating about the homoeroticism that has rotted the Jesuits? The Jesuits have always been rotten. Nothing new there. It is because he knows this: there is a war between the righteous and the peverse, and we will end up either Human and glorious, or enslaved and Orcs.
Being nice to an Orc does not help him. Being lunch does.
The milquetoast side of Catholic blogging keeps thinking that niceness is a sort of absolute value. It isn’t. Niceness is a “nice to have” and nothing more. If you read the Gospel, Christ’s words emerge as brutally frank on so many occasions that it is impossible to think he would allow niceness to stand anywhere in the way of Truth.
Nor is the conflict now openly lacerating the Church in need of any niceness. The enemy must be defeated, not be treated nicely.
Throw at them your anger and your mocking. Cover them in ridicule. Expose them in any way you can.
Forget niceness. This is no tea at the vicarage, and most certainly no time for niceness.
When you die you will not be judged according to how nice you were. You will be judged according to where you died one of Father Z ones, or one of those of Father James “Liberace” Martin, And there is no place in the middle whatsoever.
The trouble with the nice church is that it assumes that if people like us we are doing well and God is pleased. This is wrong. Gor is displeased, and people are supposed to hate us.
11“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
13“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
14“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
We are not supposed to be of this world. We as supposed to be better. Our lives should be a witness: enough to make those who have chosen to perversity and to excise their conscience for ideology (for that is what an Orc is) feel that they are under the day star at its most burning.
We are here to proclaim Christ. Not anything else. Regardless of what the bishops say, or how craven the official church is.
And diversity is not the Gospel.
Eva Brunne, who was made the world’s first openly lesbian bishop by the church of Sweden in 2009, and has a young son with her wife and fellow lesbian priest Gunilla Linden, made the suggestion to make those of other faiths more welcome.
The church targeted is the Seamen’s mission church in Stockholm’s eastern dockyards. The Bishop held a meeting there this year and challenged the priest to explain what he’d do if a ship’s crew came into port who weren’t Christian but wanted to pray.
Calling Muslim guests to the church “angels“, the Bishop later took to her official blog to explain that removing Christian symbols from the church and preparing the building for Muslim prayer doesn’t make a priest any less a defender of the faith. Rather, to do any less would make one “stingy towards people of other faiths”.
The bishop insisted this wasn’t an issue, after all airports and hospitals already had multi-faith prayer rooms, and converting the dockyard church would only bring it up to speed. Regardless, the announcement has aroused protest.
Father Patrik Pettersson, one of the priests in her diocese and active in the same parish as the Seaman’s mission church has hit back in a blog of his own, complaining there is no way you could equate a consecrated church with a prayer room, remarking “I should have thought a bishop would be able to tell the difference”.
Calling the bishop’s words “theologically unthinking”, he asked what was to be done with crucifixes screwed to the walls, and heavy items such as baptismal fonts.
“Ignoring the rhetorical murmuring”, Pettersson wrote: “The only argument bishop Eva really put forward in support of her view is ‘hospitality’… How do you respond to that? Not much of a basis for discussion, as one colleague put it. The theological, ecclesiological, pastoral and working issues are left untouched”.
The actual priest at the Seaman’s mission was left nonplussed by the comments of the Bishop when contacted by Dagen.se for comment.
As an independent mission the church operates outside of the diocese, and so the bishop has no authority there, a fact reflected by the response of the church director who said the bishop’s words were her business alone.
When asked whether she would be removing the cross from her church, Kiki Wetterberg responded: “I have no problem with Muslim or Hindu sailors coming here and praying. But I believe that we are a Christian church, so we keep the symbols. If I visit a mosque I do not ask them to take down their symbols. It’s my choice to go in there”.
The upper echelons of the Church of Sweden, much like other national churches across Europe, seem to be fully invested in the diversity mission. Back in February, a parish church in multicultural paradise Malmö declared it would be holding a service in solidarity with the local Muslim community as a protest against a march by anti-Islamisation movement PEGIDA in the city.
The priest responsible told media: “During the protest, the Swedish Church is going to hold a service where we express joy for our city and our Muslim friends.
“There is strong support for diverse cultures in Malmö and it is important that the church is there to support that”.
Our witness is not about inclusion, and less about diversity. The Swedish church is flirting with heretical error. We are not here to be nice, or to serve the people.
We are here to proclaim Christ crucified: a nonsense to the Jews and an offense to the Greeks, and risen: an offense to the Jews and a nonsense to the Greeks. Both will hate us.
And we are commanded not to care. For they hated Christ first.