Back to the Ghetto?

John Zmirak on the plight of Catholics in America. To quote:

As the state takes more of our money and restricts our religious activities, we will ever more start to resemble the dhimmi Christians of the Muslim world — not free in any meaningful sense, but “tolerated,” like Protestants in Franco’s Spain.

As we crawl back into an ever-narrowing ghetto, we must remember that the devil is sure to follow. The first thing we’ll have to remember is this: Being a Catholic, even an activist one in a fiercely resistant subculture, doesn’t exempt a man from original sin. Just because someone checks off the same doctrinal boxes as you does not mean you can trust him. (Nor he you.) Nor, regretfully, does the fact that he’s wearing a collar or even a miter — as one recent event reveals a bishop’s serious failure to act swiftly and decisively to root out wrongdoing.

Think you can winnow out every impure motive by imposing a stricter standard of doctrine or worship? So have thousands of earnest, prayerful, naïve Catholics in the recent past — from the traditionalist Catholics in Pennsylvania who tried to start a “Catholic city” to those who enrolled with or trusted their children to a burgeoning, perfectly orthodox religious order that flaunted its contacts in Rome. There are many more examples, but you get the point.

The Catholic subculture, just like the rest of fallen mankind, has its share of sociopaths, con men, parasites and bullies — the “wolves” whom Our Lord warned would come for the “lambs.” Like the rest of the non-profit sector, we attract more than our fair share of loafers, who gravitate to us because they sense that our standards are lower. Maybe they get that idea from the way we dress for Mass.

For too long and far too often, we have winked at mediocrity, malfeasance, even malice on the part of our fellow “faithful Catholics,” reasoning that each culprit was “one of us.” (I won’t name the major archdiocese that has a “blue book” of overpriced contractors it uses exclusively, because those owners are kin of clergy.) There’s a word for this kind of behavior, whether it’s practiced by Wall Street bankers, union leaders or orthodox Catholics: It’s called “corruption.” (Read entire article.)

Share