What About Us?

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Deafening Our Conscience Through Outrage

Everyone notices the wrongdoing done by other people. We see something that seems unjust and we are outraged. We demand instantaneous retraction and until that is done, the one we see as guilty loses all rights to being treated as a human person. If that person is a member of the clergy, he is treated as if he forfeits all rights to the respect and submission due his office.

Meanwhile, more often than not, people refuse to consider their own wrongdoing as anything worth considering. Refusing obedience to the Church because their teachings and actions do not mesh with one’s own beliefs is not recognized as disobedience. Instead it’s treated as “standing up against evil,” where everyone imagines they are a miniature St. Paul, withstanding an erring Peter to his face.

The problem is, we are not like St. Paul. We’re more like the Pharisee who treats the sinner—or the one we think is sinning—as beneath contempt while thinking we’re superior because we don’t sin... or, if we do, at least we don’t sin as badly as them.

That’s a dangerous attitude. It shows we’ve forgotten or ignored our own guilt. As long as we aren’t as bad (in our own eyes) as them, we’re the good ones, the wise ones. That’s a dangerous attitude because it shows we we have become deaf to our conscience. As Benedict XVI put it:

“The Pharisee is no longer aware that he too is guilty. He is perfectly at ease with his own conscience. But this silence of his conscience makes it impossible for God and men to penetrate his carapace—whereas the cry of conscience that torments the tax collector opens him to receive truth and love. Jesus can work effectively among sinners because they have not become inaccessible behind the screen of an erring conscience, which would put them out of reach of the changes that God awaits from them—and from us. Jesus cannot work effectively among the righteous because they sense no need for forgiveness and repentance; their conscience no longer accuses them but only justifies them.”

—Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 82

When we are deaf to conscience, we justify the evil we do, saying it’s not as bad as the evil they do, therefore it’s unimportant. We protest, asking “Why does the Church focus on us when those people are doing worse? What we forget is that the deadliest sin for an individual is the one that sends that individual to hell. 

So you don’t support abortion? Congratulations. You’ve none nothing more than demanded of you. But if you’re committing other sins while refusing to acknowledge and repent of them, you might be no better off in the eyes of God—even if the magnitude of your sins are objectively less.

Our Lord shocked the Pharisees when He said, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.” [Matthew 21:31 (NABRE)]. If He wanted to shock us equally today, He might say, “the pro-abortion politicians and cowardly bishops” (to name two popular targets of revulsion). If they repent but we do not, then they are in the same situation as the tax collectors [§] while we are in the same situation as the Pharisees. This doesn’t mean, “treat sins as unimportant.” It means “don’t exalt yourself just because you haven’t done that.” 

Or, as St. John Chrysostom, (Homily III on 2 Timothy), discusses on our focus on the great sins of others:

“Let each therefore, with an upright conscience, entering into a review of what he has done, and bringing his whole life before him, consider, whether he is not deserving of chastisements and punishments without number? And when he is indignant that some one, who has been guilty of many bad actions, escapes with impunity; let him consider his own faults, and his indignation will cease. For those crimes appear great, because they are in great and notorious matters; but if he will enquire into his own, he will perhaps find them more numerous.”

So, when we see sin in the Church—especially when it seems to go unnoticed—it’s not wrong to want justice and reform. But it is wrong to play the Pharisee, using the sins of others to justify ourselves. We might be risking our souls by using another’s sins as an excuse to ignore our own wrongdoing.

_______________

[§] To put it in historical context: Tax collectors (publicani) of the Roman Empire were not the equivalent of the modern IRS. Their greed and corruption ruined and destabilized entire provinces. 

Thoughts on Letting False Narrative Interpret Facts

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Self-Righteousness or Seeking Righteousness?

Introduction

Some things the Church warns about gets shunted aside in different eras. If we think of them at all, we think of them as something other people do and never scrutinize our own actions. I think one of these issues is the issue of self-righteousness—the belief in one’s own actions and motives are morally superior to their opponents. Those who did not share that position were considered morally wrong, not merely mistaken. Unfortunately, many confuse their own self-righteousness with seeking righteousness, which means seeking out what is right and carrying it out. If we assume our own actions are righteous, while those who disagree with us choose evil; if we never ask whether we are doing wrong, while being certain no good Catholic can think differently than us—those are signs of being self-righteous.

Before I go on, I want to make something clear. I am not speaking in support of moral relativism. Some things simply are incompatible with being a Catholic Christian, and we may never dismiss them or treat them lightly. If a fellow Catholic is in error, he or she does need to be led to the truth. But not all differences are based on the willful disregard of Catholic teaching. Moreover, it is not just “other people” who can be in error. We can be blind to our own faults as well.

A Political Example

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

(Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth)

One of the sadder things I see on social media is the division that still exists among some Catholics over moral decisions made during the election. Since the 2016 elections were arguably the worst choices we’ve had in living memory, Catholics were faced with the unenviable decision of picking one of the unfit candidates from the major parties, or an unelectable candidate from a minor party. Catholics trying to act in good faith made their decision on how to prevent the most damage for the next four years. It’s the kind of thing where afterwards, you expected Catholics to say to each other, “That was a terrible election. I pray our options are better next time.”

But in many cases, that didn’t happen. Some Catholics focussed instead on others who made a different decision on how to best limit evil, assuming they were supporters of the worst evils that came from their choice. So, those who voted for our current president are accused of being responsible for every action he takes that runs counter to Church teaching, regardless of whether the Catholic voter supported it or not (the guilt by association fallacy). Meanwhile, those who voted against him are accused of favoring every evil his main opponent supported. So, every time President Trump does something, we get a flood of posts accusing those who disagreed with the poster of either supporting evils in his proposals as well as counter-posts accusing the first group of supporting evils that would have happened if he hadn’t been elected.

At the same time that this is going on, these factions are congratulating themselves for standing up for the Catholic faith because of the superficial links between their favored party and the Church teaching they happen to feel strongly about, ignoring the parts where their favored party runs against Catholic teaching. I’ve seen Catholics who voted, Democrat, Republican, and Third Party act this way, all castigating the others. In other words, these groups accuse each other of putting politics above the Catholic faith, never considering that both groups used the same arguments to reach different conclusions. 

Non-Political Examples

It’s not only in politics. We can see it in the “all we need to do to save the Church is…” attitudes. Some argue that we all need to return to ad orientem, reception of Communion on the tongue, etc., and if we don’t, we’re ignoring the problem, or even in cahoots with those who rebel. Others say the Church needs to change her attitude towards contraception, divorce/remarriage, woman priests, etc., to prevent the collapse of the Church, and those who disagree are against Christ. The problem is, these solutions are not based on the teaching of the Church, but on what we think the Church should be. Often we elevate a discipline to a doctrine. Often, we try to treat a doctrine like a discipline. But in both cases, we tend to attack the people who disagree with us as ignoring the problem or even being a part of it.

But like the political examples above, people are assuming that different views means being part of the problem, through not caring or about actively willing evil. I think the difference between this and the political examples is we are no longer arguing over the best way to apply Church teaching, but whether Church teaching is to be followed. In this case, we’re not only being self-righteous towards others, but towards the shepherds of the Church. Like so many other things, this isn’t done by a single faction. Whether it is a case of a rigorist Catholic saying the Church has no right to reach out in compassion to sinners, or a laxist Catholic saying the Church has no right to bar Catholics from the Eucharist, these are cases where the self-righteous Catholic is saying they are superior to those tasked with shepherding the Church. Whether it’s a case of accusing the Pope of heresy or of accusing a saint of heresy, this is (among other sins) self-righteousness.

The Risk To Ourselves

The problem is, when we fall into self-righteousness, we forget to consider three things:

1. The fact that we might be wrong in assuming our opponent's error or bad will
2. The fact that we might be wrong in the positions we hold.
3. The fact that we are to show patience and charity to those actually in error.

Let’s face it. If we’re going to call a Catholic who viewed Trump as the least harmful choice, “Anti-abortion but not pro-life,” (or if we call the Catholic who could not vote for Trump in good conscience and voted for a Third Party, “pro-Hillary”), we’re being self-righteous. We overlook the fact the individual might have acted in good will. We overlook the possibility of making an error of our own. And, if the person actually did vote this way for reasons incompatible with Catholic teaching, we are not likely to win them back by behaving self-righteously. But bringing them back is part of the Great Commission.

Here’s a personal example on the third point: When I was in my early 20s, I began to consider the Catholic faith I was raised in seriously. But some of my positions were not compatible with the Catholic faith, and I was struggling with these issues, trying to understand how something I had always thought to be politically bad was morally good. If I had encountered the social media crowd of Catholics who insult and speak abusively towards those who thought differently, I would have probably equated the Catholic faith with their behavior and left it behind, thinking it wrong. I probably would have been morally culpable for the errors I clung to, thinking them right. But I think God would have had something to say, at the Final Judgment, to those who drove me away as well.

Pope Francis, in stressing mercy, remembers what many American Catholics seem to forget—we’re not goalies, trying to keep lesser Catholics out. Nor are we just throwing out the rules and saying, “Anything goes.” What we’re trying to do is reach out to those lost sheep and bringing them back into the fold. That means reconciling them with God. And how can we reconcile people who we drive away? How will we answer God when we, instead of rescuing the lost sheep, pitch it back in the brambles?

It Starts With Ourselves

As i said back in the beginning of the post, I’m not saying we should let people do whatever they want and not worry about it. IF they are in error, we need to guide them back. But if we’re self-righteous, how can we guide them? We need to be guided ourselves. This means we need to turn to God in prayer and study, seeking out how we are called to live, not confusing our preferences with what the Church actually teaches. We need to investigate the actual statements and motives of the person who disagrees with us—not presuming on either. We need to recognize that if we are actually not in error and another is, we are called to be Christlike in reaching out to them.

Escaping self-righteousness in favor of seeking righteousness is hard. For example, I’m constantly struggling with sarcasm when it comes to people I think are wrong and should know better. I struggle with it because I know there’s no spiritual growth, and a lot of spiritual harm there. But the temptation is always there to want to “put wrongdoers in their place” and seeking to do right in such cases is much harder.

But, if we fail to make the attempt, then we are like the Pharisees who opposed Our Lord and judged others, never showing mercy, and never considering our own need for it. Don’t think this is a Conservative problem or a Liberal problem. Don’t consider this a Traditionalist problem or a Modernist problem. This is a problem for any person who will neither consider the possibility of their own error, nor show mercy when they are right.

Let's Talk Elections—More Specifically Let's Talk About Our Behavior in Them

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The Political Pharisee

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Corruptio Optimi Pessima (Corruption of the Best is the Worst)

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The Snares of the Devil

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TFTD: The "Followership" Problem in the Church

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

—William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

Many Catholic writers have decried the leadership problem in the Church. It is true that sometimes the Church has people in positions of authority who do not guide as well as they should, some even shirking their position. That is a serious matter. As St. Paul points out in 1 Cor 14:8, "And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” 

But I think there is another problem as well, and that is that some Catholics simply do not like the sound of the bugle they hear, and grumble against it.

It’s easy to point fingers at political factions in the Church. For years, conservative Catholics pointed fingers at the liberal dissent in the Church, blaming bishops for it. Now, we have some conservative dissent, and liberal Catholics are pointing their own fingers and trying to implicate bishops for it. Each side tries to cast themselves as the “good” Catholics and the other side as the dissenters.

The problem is, Catholicism is neither conservative nor liberal. There are some positions in Catholic teaching that may sound conservative or liberal, but the reasons the Church teaches is different from the political motivations for a position. So the American bishops are called “The Republican Party at Prayer,” and the Pope is called a “Marxist.” But the fact is, these are condemnations from people who assume that similarity means sympathy. These people either try to misrepresent the Church message as a political ideology to bolster their own credibility or to justify their own disobedience from that teaching.

As a result we are seeing Catholic media and blogs, which had defended the Church from being misrepresented, now suddenly believing the misrepresentation. They show signs of lacking conviction that the Church remains what she has always been, and are attracted to the passionate intensity of those who attack the Church from within.

We on Earth are the Church Militant. That means we have to be prepared for battle. Regardless of whoever may be shirking their duty, that doesn’t reduce our own need to be ready. Some of the officers (clergy and religious) may be shirking—but not all of them are. We need to be ready to defend the Church teaching in it’s fullness, and not accuse the faithful officers (including the Pope) of being shirkers because the orders given are not the ones we would prefer to have.

Christ is the Physician, We Are The Sick

^30 The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

^31 Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.

^32 I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

I think one of the things Christians need to keep in mind is that, when Christ says He has not come to call the righteous but the sinners, we must recognize we are the sinners who need Him, and not the perfect who are already worthy as they are.  We may be tempted to think we are righteous, but we are not.

All of us are tainted by the effects of original sin, and by the sinful acts we do of our own choosing.  In some cases, it may be easy to see.  The tax collectors realizes he is a sinner and prays for forgiveness (see Luke 18:13).  In other cases it is not easy to see.  The self-righteous instead boasts before God (Luke 18:11-12).

The False Dichotomy

We unfortunately have the tendency to create a false either-or situation in our minds:

1. If I am [a good person] I will not be [like this tax collector]. (If [A] then [B])
2. I am not [like this tax collector] (not [B])
3. Therefore I am [a good person] (Therefore [A])

The problem of course is that just because we may not be "like this tax collector" does not make us a good person.  In other words, if we use Hitler as the standard of evil, we all look good in comparison but if Hitler is not the standard of evil, but rather one example of evil, we may find that none of us can take a righteous attitude in what we do.

"Bad News Boys…"

There is an old joke which runs as follows:

A priest was hearing confessions for a mining camp.  The first miner walks in and the priest asks him to confess his sins.

The miner scratches his head and says "Well I don't know… I never killed anyone."

The exasperated priest tells him, "Get out of here and make an examination of conscience!"

The miner exits and sees the line of miners waiting for their turn.  "Go home boys!  He's only taking murderers today!"

Now of course, the priest was not only hearing the confession of murderers.  Rather he was telling the miner to consider what he had done or failed to do which needed reconciliation with God, and not judge himself in comparison to murderers.

Yet too often, we look at our relation with God with the consideration of what we haven't done compared to others… not in the sense that they have done more out of love for God in comparison to ourselves but rather that we haven't acted as bad as them, so we must be good.

We should remember Psalm 50:

^7 “Listen, my people, I will speak; Israel, I will testify against you; God, your God, am I.

^8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you, nor for your holocausts, set before me daily.

^9 I need no bullock from your house, no goats from your fold.

^10 For every animal of the forest is mine, beasts by the thousands on my mountains.

^11 I know every bird of the heavens; the creatures of the field belong to me.

^12 Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it.

^13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

^14 Offer praise as your sacrifice to God; fulfill your vows to the Most High.

^15 Then call on me in time of distress; I will rescue you, and you shall honor me.”

^16 But to the wicked God says: “Why do you recite my commandments and profess my covenant with your lips?

^17 You hate discipline; you cast my words behind you!

^18 When you see thieves, you befriend them; with adulterers you throw in your lot.

^19 You give your mouth free rein for evil; you harness your tongue to deceit.

^20 You sit maligning your own kin, slandering the child of your own mother.

^21 When you do these things should I be silent? Or do you think that I am like you? I accuse you, I lay the charge before you.

The Other Side of the Coin

On the other side of this coin is the claim that because we aren't doing any worse than anyone else, we are fine as we are.  God has commanded in Exodus 23:2 ^ Neither shall you allege the example of the many as an excuse for doing wrong (in other translations it can be rendered You shall not follow a multitude to do evil).  In the New Testament, Jesus says in Luke 17:

^8 If your hand or foot causes you to sin, ^cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire.

^9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.

Going along to get along is not what we are to do.  Christ makes use of some graphic imagery to show the lengths we are to take to avoid sin.  If we would not cut off our foot or gouge out our eye, should we not take steps to avoid sin?  If "the crowd" embraces sin as good, ought we not to avoid "the crowd" when it seeks to lead us to do evil?

Neither can we appeal to the bad example of those who do not practice what they preach.  Jesus, in Matthew 23 says in verses 2-3, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.

Are there individual priests and even bishops who fail to behave as they ought?  Indeed there are, and they will answer for the things they will not repent of.  For Christ says in Luke 17: 1-2, "Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur.  It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin."

However, the personal sins of an individual priest or bishop do not justify our own sins.  Nor does it justify the disobedience of the Church in one area because a priest or bishop is disobedient in another.

Completing the Circle

Thus we can see that both the disdaining of others while ignoring our own sins, and the thinking we are no worse than others so our sins don't matter are attitudes which contradict the teachings of Christ.  He has come to call the sinners, not the righteous.  If we think we are good because we are "not like them" or if we think we are good because we "only do what everyone else is doing," we are behaving self-righteously, and refusing to let Jesus, the Divine Physician, heal our infirmities.

So let us cease to think of ourselves as some sort of "elect" who have it made, and instead recognize we are sinners who daily must rely on Christ to strengthen and sustain us.

The Leerwort Letters (My own attempt at the Screwtape Letter Genre)

Doing versions of the Screwtape Letters is to take an awful risk as a writer.  CS Lewis did have a great insight into the human heart and how the devil hoped to deceive us away from God.  Most of us don't have either that insight or the talent to express that insight in writing, and the result is it reads like an argument made by a Christian with a few cosmetic changes to make it sound like the Screwtape Letters. 

I suspect my own attempt will come much closer to one of the failed attempts to mimic the genre, but I thought it is a topic I thought I should approach: The temptation of the faithful Christian into rebellion without even realizing it.

So, for better or for worse (most likely the latter) here is my own attempt at the genre.

My Dear Casketgnaw,

You seem to have put your foot in it when it came to assignments being passed out today. You managed to complain loudly that your because your patient was a conservative and a faithful Christian therefore you were being set up to fail. It’s bad enough that you embarrassed yourself with such a foolish statement. It’s worse because being my former student at the Tempter’s Academy, you managed to make it look like I’ve taught you nothing.

So it seems I will have to give you an overview of the fundamentals you somehow failed to learn while in Tempters School.

Just because a person is pious doesn’t mean they are untouchable. The only people we have been unable to touch were our Enemy and the creature He used to be His mother. Everyone else, we can crack if we just think about how to exploit their weaknesses. You think Conservative Christians are a tough nut to crack? Just look at the phrase “conservative Christian” and you will see a wedge you can use to separate the patient from the Enemy.  "Christian" is a belief which the Enemy wants to affect all other preferences the patient has.  We want the Patient to judge "Christianity" by "Conservative" just as we want our liberal patients to judge "Christianity" by "Liberalism."

So, my dear former pupil, it matters not whether the patient is Catholic or Buddhist, Conservative or Liberal. Our job is to turn their head to look at things in the way we want them to see and once we get them into the habit of putting their own wants first; to discourage them from thinking they could be wrong.

Like with every other patient we’ve had since Adam and Eve, we want them to think their wants are the only good there is, and where there is a difference, the Church must be wrong. We want them prideful. We want to lead them to think that they can’t be in error, so in any conflict, the one challenging them must be in error.

You’ll have some good resources to help with this of course. Your patient is a Catholic.  According to the case file of your patient, he is young and zealous for the faith and has come to understand that the Church he is in is indeed the Church the enemy has established. These things, if left unattended can indeed lead him into the Enemy’s camp so we can have no grasp on him once he changes from death to life.

However, because he is young and zealous, we can misdirect both to our own ends.  We have had some success in guiding some of our other patients within the Enemy's church to do some foolish things which will scandalize your own patient.  All they need to do is to look at the news accounts of a priest who abuses the Enemy’s Mass; the nun who is a lesbian feminist, the theologian who claims that it is being true to that hated Vatican Council II (We had to work hard to make it ineffectual) to do the opposite of what the Council says.

With these scandals, we then can lead them to think “I’m not that way!” Then we can guide them to the unspoken conclusion that “therefore what I think should be is the true teaching of the Church.”

Remember, the young are not like the old. With the old we encourage them “not to make waves,” or to see so many sides to the story that they lose sight of the Enemy’s side of the story. With the young we want to appeal to their sense of justice and lead them to a view which is very unjust indeed when looking at others.  When he prays, we want his prayers to become like the Pharisee in the Enemy's parable: "O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector."

So don’t waste your time appealing to his baser instincts… that’s not to say it won’t work.  (He does have a girlfriend after all… though she too is trying to be faithful to the enemy, and any unrepented mortal sin works for us).  It's just that you don’t need to make him a hedonist to bring him into our clutches. Rather, use them in a way compatible with his views: lead him to the view that so many people out there are hedonists and seem to suffer no consequences for doing so. Now, unless he has some compulsions to exploit, you won’t make him into a public sinner. But you can exploit his own desires and lead him to think “Something must be done!”

Once you have your patient realizing “something must be done” we can nudge him to notice that his church is not handling it in the way he would prefer, and whisper to him that it shows the church is not doing what the Enemy wants.

It is true that often our best strategies are to hide the fact that we exist. However in this kind of case, it often helps to make it known we do exist and make it seem we are to blame for the church action the patient does not like.

We can exploit this "arguing in a circle" to our benefit, getting our patient to think that what he thinks should be done is the Enemy's will is the first step.  Leading him to think that any difference between his view and the actions of the Church (and you should always suggest that it is the Enemy's Church and not some of the useful idiots within who does the wrong things he is offended by) indicates the Enemy's Church is controlled by our useful idiots and by us should be very successful.

This will have the added benefit that when the patient's political views or personal situation runs afoul of the Church (and at times they will… that's the beauty of Our Father Below's attack on that Adam and Eve… concupiscence makes them want to be selfish), they will judge the Enemy's Church as following our dictates, forgetting the Enemy's promise that we would never prevail against it (we will someday!) and never consider the possibility of their own situation being at odds with the Enemy.

Next time you’re down Below, go swing by and visit where Donatus is roasting away. He was a person who was vigorous in defense of the Church, yet we have him now. You want to know why?

We got him to think his view of what the Enemy's Church should be was The Enemy's view of what the Church should be, and he ended up condemning and defying the Enemy's Church for laxity and heresy. Isn’t that fun? He and his were so worked up about the Pope readmitting those patients back into the Church who they thought should be kept out, that he denied the authority of the Church when it went against them!

Don't get carried away however.  You don't need to make your patient a schismatic. So long as he thinks the difference between himself and the official teaching of the Enemy's Church to be our infiltration of the Enemy's Church, we can deafen him to the Enemy trying to steal him away from us.

But always remember the first fundamental step: Always lead the patient to think that what he wants is right, and when the Church challenges that, the Church must be wrong.  In doing so, you can deceive both the hedonist who hate's the enemy and the Enemy's servant alike.

 

Affectionately,

Your Instructor, Leerwort

The Leerwort Letters (My own attempt at the Screwtape Letter Genre)

Doing versions of the Screwtape Letters is to take an awful risk as a writer.  CS Lewis did have a great insight into the human heart and how the devil hoped to deceive us away from God.  Most of us don't have either that insight or the talent to express that insight in writing, and the result is it reads like an argument made by a Christian with a few cosmetic changes to make it sound like the Screwtape Letters. 

I suspect my own attempt will come much closer to one of the failed attempts to mimic the genre, but I thought it is a topic I thought I should approach: The temptation of the faithful Christian into rebellion without even realizing it.

So, for better or for worse (most likely the latter) here is my own attempt at the genre.

My Dear Casketgnaw,

You seem to have put your foot in it when it came to assignments being passed out today. You managed to complain loudly that your because your patient was a conservative and a faithful Christian therefore you were being set up to fail. It’s bad enough that you embarrassed yourself with such a foolish statement. It’s worse because being my former student at the Tempter’s Academy, you managed to make it look like I’ve taught you nothing.

So it seems I will have to give you an overview of the fundamentals you somehow failed to learn while in Tempters School.

Just because a person is pious doesn’t mean they are untouchable. The only people we have been unable to touch were our Enemy and the creature He used to be His mother. Everyone else, we can crack if we just think about how to exploit their weaknesses. You think Conservative Christians are a tough nut to crack? Just look at the phrase “conservative Christian” and you will see a wedge you can use to separate the patient from the Enemy.  "Christian" is a belief which the Enemy wants to affect all other preferences the patient has.  We want the Patient to judge "Christianity" by "Conservative" just as we want our liberal patients to judge "Christianity" by "Liberalism."

So, my dear former pupil, it matters not whether the patient is Catholic or Buddhist, Conservative or Liberal. Our job is to turn their head to look at things in the way we want them to see and once we get them into the habit of putting their own wants first; to discourage them from thinking they could be wrong.

Like with every other patient we’ve had since Adam and Eve, we want them to think their wants are the only good there is, and where there is a difference, the Church must be wrong. We want them prideful. We want to lead them to think that they can’t be in error, so in any conflict, the one challenging them must be in error.

You’ll have some good resources to help with this of course. Your patient is a Catholic.  According to the case file of your patient, he is young and zealous for the faith and has come to understand that the Church he is in is indeed the Church the enemy has established. These things, if left unattended can indeed lead him into the Enemy’s camp so we can have no grasp on him once he changes from death to life.

However, because he is young and zealous, we can misdirect both to our own ends.  We have had some success in guiding some of our other patients within the Enemy's church to do some foolish things which will scandalize your own patient.  All they need to do is to look at the news accounts of a priest who abuses the Enemy’s Mass; the nun who is a lesbian feminist, the theologian who claims that it is being true to that hated Vatican Council II (We had to work hard to make it ineffectual) to do the opposite of what the Council says.

With these scandals, we then can lead them to think “I’m not that way!” Then we can guide them to the unspoken conclusion that “therefore what I think should be is the true teaching of the Church.”

Remember, the young are not like the old. With the old we encourage them “not to make waves,” or to see so many sides to the story that they lose sight of the Enemy’s side of the story. With the young we want to appeal to their sense of justice and lead them to a view which is very unjust indeed when looking at others.  When he prays, we want his prayers to become like the Pharisee in the Enemy's parable: "O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector."

So don’t waste your time appealing to his baser instincts… that’s not to say it won’t work.  (He does have a girlfriend after all… though she too is trying to be faithful to the enemy, and any unrepented mortal sin works for us).  It's just that you don’t need to make him a hedonist to bring him into our clutches. Rather, use them in a way compatible with his views: lead him to the view that so many people out there are hedonists and seem to suffer no consequences for doing so. Now, unless he has some compulsions to exploit, you won’t make him into a public sinner. But you can exploit his own desires and lead him to think “Something must be done!”

Once you have your patient realizing “something must be done” we can nudge him to notice that his church is not handling it in the way he would prefer, and whisper to him that it shows the church is not doing what the Enemy wants.

It is true that often our best strategies are to hide the fact that we exist. However in this kind of case, it often helps to make it known we do exist and make it seem we are to blame for the church action the patient does not like.

We can exploit this "arguing in a circle" to our benefit, getting our patient to think that what he thinks should be done is the Enemy's will is the first step.  Leading him to think that any difference between his view and the actions of the Church (and you should always suggest that it is the Enemy's Church and not some of the useful idiots within who does the wrong things he is offended by) indicates the Enemy's Church is controlled by our useful idiots and by us should be very successful.

This will have the added benefit that when the patient's political views or personal situation runs afoul of the Church (and at times they will… that's the beauty of Our Father Below's attack on that Adam and Eve… concupiscence makes them want to be selfish), they will judge the Enemy's Church as following our dictates, forgetting the Enemy's promise that we would never prevail against it (we will someday!) and never consider the possibility of their own situation being at odds with the Enemy.

Next time you’re down Below, go swing by and visit where Donatus is roasting away. He was a person who was vigorous in defense of the Church, yet we have him now. You want to know why?

We got him to think his view of what the Enemy's Church should be was The Enemy's view of what the Church should be, and he ended up condemning and defying the Enemy's Church for laxity and heresy. Isn’t that fun? He and his were so worked up about the Pope readmitting those patients back into the Church who they thought should be kept out, that he denied the authority of the Church when it went against them!

Don't get carried away however.  You don't need to make your patient a schismatic. So long as he thinks the difference between himself and the official teaching of the Enemy's Church to be our infiltration of the Enemy's Church, we can deafen him to the Enemy trying to steal him away from us.

But always remember the first fundamental step: Always lead the patient to think that what he wants is right, and when the Church challenges that, the Church must be wrong.  In doing so, you can deceive both the hedonist who hate's the enemy and the Enemy's servant alike.

 

Affectionately,

Your Instructor, Leerwort