Scandal, Politics, and Entering the Church

I have had some Catholics check in on me to make sure that I'm ok in my journey back Home to Rome. Between the issues with Pope Francis, the challenging politics, the scandals the Church is still dealing with, and the Coronavirus pandemic keeping us from the Sacraments, they are justified in feeling that I may slip away. It doesn't help, too, that evangelicals are grabbing on every bit of medie frenzy in order to "prove" the Church is wrong, faulty, or even demonic. I recently stood up to a local non-denominational pastor who said the papacy and Catholicism are demonic.

Christ, Himself said, in Matthew 16, that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. Skipping down a few verses, we see the famous portion of scripture where Christ rebukes His newly appointed Pope, Peter, by saying, "get thee behind me, Satan." The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. That doesn't mean the Church won't be attacked. Christ rebukes Peter almost immediately after appointing him. That is important. It shows that we are still humans and prone to sin. That even those whom Christ appoints can fall prey to sin and the wiles of the evil one. But that doesn't mean the whole person or the whole papacy or the whole of the Catholic Church is wrong, bad, evil, or demonic. If anything, and especially when seeing the whole of the history of the Church, it PROVES Christ right!

Of course the evil one is going to attack Christ's Church! Of course! That's his goal and plan. The evil one has no need of brutally and thoroughly attacking that which is not Christ's. He has no need of tempting and deceiving those who are already deceived or not bothering to fight his deception.

So, what is the point of this difficult and confusing climate? I believe this is an instance of separating the wheat from the chaff. We are forced to look into Scripture, tradition, and the Catechism. We are forced to study, to understand, to pray like we've never prayed before. We are forced to evaluate our faith and why we are Catholic. We are forced to look to Christ rather than just float by.

I am sad whenever I hear a Catholic say they are leaving the Church because of politics or something the Pope said or some scandal. You don't leave Christ because one of his disciples royally messed up. You don't divorce your spouse because your child back-talked you, or grew up and robbed a bank. You don't abandon your house because your toddler defied your authority. You don't walk away and join another family because your child sins. You don't abandon everything because Satan came knocking and stirred up strife. You don't declare your marriage and children a huge mistake just because Satan attacks it.

I am not slipping away. Instead, I am buckling down and becoming ever more convinced of the Truth of the Catholic Church because of how it is attacked, infiltrated, hated, and lied about, and still upholds, ever-solid, the Gospel. When Catholics are of strong faith, mountains are moved!

As scary as it may be to lose parishoners, and of course we must help and support those struggling in their faith, but we also must allow the chaff to blow away in the wind and establish a clean, hearty wheat harvest within the Church. Be wheat. Don't be blown away by the winds that blow this way and that. Be strong and full of the faith so that you rest on the foundation, the threshing floor with the rest of the wheat, which is ground into flour to make the bread that is the Body of Christ.