According to the Magisterium or hierarchy, “The Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ. It is a flock of which God Himself foretold He would be the shepherd,  and whose sheep, although ruled by human shepherds; are nevertheless continuously led and nourished by Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd and the Prince of the shepherds, who gave His life for the sheep.” (Lumen Gentium)

Today, “The Vatican confesses: the hierarchical Church has lost the people” writes  Robert Mickens in his latest article from La Croix International.

“Vatican City Call it the Vatican or call it the Holy See. It hardly matters anymore because the difference and nuances between the two terms (or entities) are lost on most people. That includes the majority of Catholics. Increasingly, it seems, people don’t care whether a distinction even exists. Holy See and Vatican mean only one thing to most folks — headquarters of the Catholic Church or bureaucratic center of a two-millennia-old religious behemoth. And that behemoth, as I argued last week, continues to experience an implosion that dates back to at least the Reformation. Certainly by the time of the Enlightenment in the 17th century, this implosion became an ongoing process.”

In John 10:16 Jesus says “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must lead them too, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” Jesus rules his flock through the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet the hierarchy claims themselves as the rulers.  

The norm, according to sheep herding. – is that it is the sheep dogs who contain and herd the flock to follow the Shepherd- there is only ONE shepherd per flock. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” The sheep dogs keep the sheep following their shepherd. SO the overseers or bishops act as the dogs- barking and mustering or gathering together the sheep to help them follow the one Shepherd, Jesus.

Notice how the language from Lumen Gentium implies certain concepts that are contrary to the attitude and teaching of Jesus. The title “Prince” is given to the one Shepherd but Jesus would object since he rebuked power, fame, and fortune, and the title “Prince” would be abhorrent to him! This is another interjection coming from the clerical dominance of the Catholic Church which allowed  the Royal leaders of nations to act as shepherds and bestow royal titles upon some of the sheep who became bishops. This must end. In Matthew 23, “..you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.” So why would they think that “monsignor”, “excellency”, “eminence” or “holiness” is acceptable? “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” Ha! They ignored this as well!

“From time to time “enlightened” Christians raised their voice to warn the Church’s hierarchs that this was futile. Then, finally, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) sought to make peace with “modernity”, including democracy.” (Robert Mickens )

Vatican II began when a man named Angelo Roncalli a “prince” of the Roman Catholic Church, was elected pope in 1958 as a compromise choice between conservative and liberal cardinals of the Catholic Church  after 11 ballots.  He was old, not part of the Vatican Elite, and hardly known to most of the People of God around the world. But he was loved by all the people he met and served and by those who met him and observed him. Many of the latter were non-Catholics from all walks of life, from various religions, and from different countries. He was truly a “people person”.

The Church, in Lumen Gentium, quotes Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: “The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful, as in a temple” It was that same Spirit that enlightened Angelo Roncalli and gave notice of his intention to convene the council on 25 January 1959, less than three months after his election. He said that it was time to “open the windows of the Church and let in some fresh air. He invited the Catholic bishops of the world, and Protestant as well as other religious leaders. Over 2,100 were in attendance at the 4 sessions that ended in 1965. It is that same Spirit who dwells in the hearts of all the faithful, that you and me!

The Council produced four major “constitutions” and twelve other documents. Together, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (LG), and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World , Gaudium et Spes, stand as the two pillars of the Second Vatican Council.The Dogmatic Constitution treats the nature of the church in itself; the Pastoral Constitution treats its mission in the world.

The first line of Gaudium et Spes reads: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.” “Led by the Spirit which implies that the overseers or bishops serve the people in carrying out that inspiration not the other way around.

The “messianic people has Christ for its head,…….The state of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in His temple.”

It seems to me that the Church hierarchy ignores the People of God or the “messianic” people over and over again. The majority of Catholics today were born after the council and are not adhered to the doctrines, devotions, and hierarchical structure or leadership in the Church. They have been taught that they have a significant role to play but the bishops have ignored this and many have not really implemented the documents of the council. Check out this article from the NCR- https://www.ncronline.org/news/survey-reveals-generation-shift-catholic-church#table2

Another development of late in America is the notion by Church leaders that Americans are to reflect religious values many of which are based in Catholic doctrine which condemns birth control, abortion, euthansia, and  homosexuality. Emposing such teachings on American culture through a political agenda is the motive for endorsing candidates that uphold such condemnations with the exception of birth control like the pill and condoms. The bishops seem to ignore the Johnson Amendment which calls for the separation of Church and State since the former President signed an order to direct the Government not to take adverse action against religious organizations that it would not take against other organizations in the enforcement of these restrictions.”

While the Johnson Amendment was weakened under the former administration it is still a law that is not enforced. The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.

Rather than play the game of hide and seek with the Catholic Church I decided to pray, listen to the Word of God, study the history and documents of the Church and follow my conscience. Too much information about Jesus, the Scriptures, and theology that the latest scholars have researched and written about is being ignored along with the fact that the Constitution’s ban on endorsing a religion and separation of Church and State is as well.

I follow Jesus’ basic teachings of the great commandment: Love God and your neighbor as your self. Keep in mind this includes the Word as well as the writings of many who followed Jesus in the past or are following him now. Many Catholics are already doing so and ignoring the doctrines and precepts of the Church which indicates that many more than President Biden should not receive Communion. The sheep are out of the fold looking for the one and only Shepherd, Jesus!

In his book, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World, the former Archbishop of Philadelphia, the city of “brotherly love”, offers a hard-hitting critique of America today. According to Chaput, the rise of secularism has not only led to a decline in the practice of Christian faith in the United States—but an open hostility to those that maintain traditional Christian beliefs and values. 

I believe that the Archbishop is guilty of scapegoating when he blames secularism for “the decline in the practice of the Christian faith in the United States. For one, the Christian faith is declining in many of the Western and Eastern nations of Europe as well.  Secondly, he fails to own up to the fact the Catholic Church has lost many of its members due to the abuse of thousands of children by clergy here and around the world. The abuse scandal was exacerbated by the failure of those in charge, diocesan officials, members of the hierarchy, as well as the popes to report the abuser priests to the Civil authorities. To make matters worse, his own efforts as the Archbishop of Philadelphia to lobby the Pennsylvania State Legislature to vote against a Pa Bill to extend the Statutes of Limitations so that the victims of abuse could seek therapy and other necessary treatment drove many to leave the Church.

John Allen writes that “Pope Benedict XVI, formerly, (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a prominent theologian of the Church,) has talked about a “healthy secularism,” which involves the separation of church and state and recognition of the essentially lay character of politics. Evangelical Catholics such as the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris actually see this kind of secularism as a precondition for authentic faith, because it forces Christianity to be a personal choice, rather than something imbibed from religiously homogenous cultures where faith and practice are buttressed by the state.” 

He goes on to write that “At senior levels of the church, there’s a growing conviction that a tipping point has been reached — that Western secularization is crossing the line from neutrality to outright hostility, toward religion in general and Catholicism in particular. Cardinal Renato Martino, the former President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, put things this way: “It looks like a new Inquisition. It is a lay Inquisition, but it is so nasty. You can freely insult and attack Catholics, and nobody will say anything.” 1

1.John Allen  for NCR Benedict’s ongoing battle against secularism Nov 6, 2009

On the one hand, we have Church leaders actually defending the existence of secularism as a “healthy secularism,” which involves the separation of church and state and recognition of the essentially lay character of politics.   Then you have a former Cardinal Archbishop of the same Church claim secularism as a precondition for authentic faith because it forces Christianity to be a personal choice, rather than something imbibed from religiously homogenous cultures where faith and practice are buttressed by the state.

So we have some in the Catholic Church who view secularism as the enemy of religion while others see it as the context within which religion exists and can actually grow. I would say that the world as created by God did not come with any particular religion or set of beliefs unless you limit your understanding of creation to that of the bible.

Indeed because there are so many ethnicities, cultures, societies, one must assume that religion would be as varied as those cultures or societies that exist. If that’s the case then the secular world is simply the pot or soil in which religion grows.

In the ancient world before the common era, religion was found in every culture. Amy Trumpeter writes that Carl Jung held that “there is a religious instinct in all human beings – an inherent striving towards a relationship with someone or something that transcends human power (a higher force or being).

Therefore, one can assume that the world is the proverbial “melting pot” of religions. Each tribe had its own religious rituals and beliefs, its own spirits, demons, and gods. Tribalism meant that you were expected to adhere to that tribe’s religion or else incur the consequences which varied from expulsion to torture and then to death. Certainly Catholic Christianity, as well, participated in some brutal responses to those considered heretics, non-beleivers or infidels. The Inquisition and the Crusades certainly are the primary pieces of evidence for this conclusion.

Fast forward to America when Europeans came here to escape persecution.The Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Catholicism. Under their leadership allowing the practice of this denomination, many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. The colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions that antagonized the others. On several occasions, “low-church” dissenters among Protestants led insurrections that temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to Protestant demands to revoke the original royal charter. In 1701 the Church of England was “established” as the state church in Maryland. Through the course of the eighteenth century, Protestants barred Catholics from public office in the colony, and then prohibited them from voting, disenfranchising them. Not all of the laws passed against Catholics (notably laws restricting property rights and imposing penalties for sending children to be educated in foreign Catholic institutions) were enforced, and some Catholics continued to hold public office.

New France was transferred to Great Britain in 1763 after it defeated France in the Seven Years War, it practiced a policy of tolerating the Catholic Church in the colony. No Catholic people in Quebec or other parts of New France were forced to convert to the Anglican Church. The British did open the colony to Protestant Huguenots, who had been banned from settlement by previous French colonial authorities – a continuation of discrimination that existed in France. 

Spanish Florida was also ceded to Great Britain in 1763, in exchange for it giving up other claims. The British divided Florida into two colonies. Both East and West Florida colonies had a policy of toleration for Catholic residents, as Catholicism had been the established religion of the Spanish colonies. Other colonies in the north and eastern sections of America were settled by several Protestant denominations.

Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Western New Jersey, and Delaware were among other colonies that did grant religious freedom or did not have an established Church.

All of this disparity among colonies and the experience of the turmoil in European nations caused by religious groups and Churches were some of the factors that may have led to one of the first laws of the land as America was taking shape:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  Separation of Church and State became the process by which society could exist without religion impacting it the way it did in Europe. The experiment of secularism and religion living side by side was about to begin. Chaput overlooks these facts.

Considering these disparities among the colonies, one must remember the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson as America was about to become one nation consisting of several colonies then eventually states. Jefferson wrote the following which then led to the beginning of the First Amendment. “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation on behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

Many of the founding fathers of America came to this continent to establish a country free of religious persecution.  Respecting the right of each person and religion to exist without fear of persecution was the new order of the day. We must recall that various denominations of Christianity had resulted from the Reformation. Wars, torture, and even genocide occurred in the long history of those Western European countries and religion played a big part. Without going into the specifics of the history of Europe since the Enlightenment, suffice it to say that Secularism became the prominent cultural movement of the Western modern world of Europe and the United States. Secularism or the State was seen as the neutral friend of religion, not its enemy.

While some Evangelicals and Catholics today see secularism or society as a weapon used to attack religion, I think differently. I would like to rebut what the author of the book mentioned in the first paragraph has concluded. For instance, Archbishop  Chaput seems to forget about the separation of Church and State and that secularism, the society, is to be free from any adherence to particular religious beliefs. Secularism relies on the core values and virtues of humanism based on Natural Law and the moral convictions and virtues of its citizens. These are not necessarily tied to religious beliefs of any religion let alone Christianity since atheists and agnostics are capable of morality and virtue. Even the Catholic Erasmus, who lived in the middle of the 15th century, embraced the humanistic belief in an individual’s capacity for self-improvement and the fundamental role of education in raising human beings above the level of brute animals. 

In 2013, before he wrote the book, Chaput decried the growing exclusion of religion from the public square and called for a shift in perspective regarding the place of religious believers in a democratic society.

At an Orange County Catholic Prayer Breakfast, he said that “in recent years people in both major American political parties have wrongly tried to blame the conflicts in American public life on the active participation of religious believers. They claim that religion is so powerful and so personal that whenever it enters public life in an organized way, it divides people.  It repels.  It polarizes.  It oversimplifies complex issues.  It creates bitterness.  It invites extremism.  And finally it violates the spirit of the Constitution by muddling up the separation of Church and state that keeps Americans from sliding into intolerance.”

I find what most people today claim about religion to be true!

As an aside, one must note that Chaput is a member of the Napa Institute which was founded in 2011, by Tim Busch a Philanthropist millionaire. He founded the Napa Institute with Father Robert Spitzer, SJ  in an effort to train Catholic leaders to defend the faith in an increasingly secular society. And since then, the Napa Institute was very involved in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

In my opinion, the Catholic Church has turned to Philanthropists and other conservative millionaires to subsidize its efforts to compensate for the loss of membership as it enters into the political arena as never before.

Chaput continues, “The same argument,” he said, “goes on to claim that, once they’re free from the burden of religious interference, mature citizens and leaders can engage in reasoned discourse, putting aside superstition and private obsessions to choose the best course for the widest public.  Because the state is above moral and religious tribalism, it can best guarantee the rights of everyone.  Therefore a fully secularized public square would be the adulthood of the American Experiment.” 

I applaud the argument but object to his conclusion that the state considers itself above moral tribalism since the Constitution is actually a moral as well as a legal document. It’s not attached to any one religion or denomination of religion.

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” 

If this isn’t a moral code, I don’t know what is!

He also points out, that there are key differences between non-sectarian public institutions and a secularist ideology.  “No Christian”, Chaput said, “should want to live under the tyranny of a secularist ideology.”  “Whenever you hear loud fretting sparked by an irrational fear of an Established Church, somebody’s trying to force religious believers and communities out of the public discussion of issues.”

This is not the case. He exaggerates as he is prone to do. I don’t want the evangelicals, let alone Catholics, or any other religious group dominating the public forum to impose its morality on me or anyone else. If the shoe were on the other foot and Muslims or Hindus or any other religious folks were to insist on their beliefs becoming the law of the land, Chaput would be singing a different tune!

He continues, “Secularism isn’t really morally neutral.  It’s actively destructive…It ignores the most basic questions of social purpose and personal meaning by writing them off as private idiosyncrasies,”  Americans are, “losing the Founders’ perspective on the meaning of our shared public life.  Certain beliefs have always held Americans together as a people.” 

I would object by saying that the Constitution provides the social purpose and personal meaning in its opening declaration, “We the people…” I’ll also add, that religion caused much division over the years as well!  Secularism is morally neutral and not intentionally destructive. The NRA declares that “Guns don’t kill, people do” and so I will say, “society doesn’t kill, rather people do”! Remember the Catholic Church heaped its own destructive force, the abuse of children, upon the good Catholic people of America and around the world.

It’s my opinion that the Archbishop has it all backward considering the fact that many Evangelical Churches and the Catholic Church have forced themselves upon the politics of our society in a manner that does violate the separation of Church and state and even the U.S. Tax Code. The 2016 election was the first election that I can recall, when clergy, from the pulpit, denounced one candidate and endorsed another. Instead of urging citizens to follow their conscience and do their patriotic duty and vote, they demanded under pain of sin that their members vote for the candidate they endorsed because the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life debate was the primary issue in the election according to Church leaders rather than the environment, poverty, minimum wages, gun control, rising racism and bigotry, and immigration.

Chaput’s book is a ploy to distract us from the guilt of the Catholic Church and put the blame on society, a society that is maturing and deciding to follow its own conscience instead of listening to preachers and teachers who do not practice what they preach and in some cases get caught actually acting against what they preach.

The word secular means “world” from “saecula”, a world that was created by God, and Catholics affirm that every time they conclude their prayers with the great doxology: Glory be to the Father….as it was, in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end, or in Latin: Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.