A New Year's Resolution from God: "Repent, you fools!"

Just before Gandalf lets go of his grip on the ledge and slips into the abyss, while fighting the Balrog, he cries to his companions: "Fly, you fools!" (Here's a clip of the battle scene on YouTube.)

How many of our fellow Catholics, let alone our unchurched neighbors, realize we have an adversary far more powerful than the Balrog? St. Paul warns: "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:11-13). This should not be taken, in the first place, to refer to bizarre phenomena associated with demonic activity, as in the exorcisms dramatized in the movies by Linda Blair's spinning head. This refers, rather, to the spiritual battle -- and it is a spiritual battle -- that pervades the world of ideas, the media, politics, popular culture, movies, TV shows, advertising, and even the banalities of many AmChurch liturgies.

75% to 80% of American Catholics do not go to weekly Mass. Two-thirds of those who do go, according to polls, do not believe in the Real Presence, perhaps inviting upon themselves the curse St. Paul mentions in I Corinthians 11:27-29, where he says that those who receive in an unworthy manner, failing to discern the Body, receive the Sacrament to their own damnation. Further, 85% of American Catholics do not go to confession even once a year, meaning that they bring further condemnation upon themselves when they receive Holy Communion.

98% of American Catholics believe that contraception is not a "grave sin." Nearly as many believe that skipping Mass on Sunday is not a "grave sin" either, any more than the other common things the Church declares to be "grave sins." How could such Catholics ever make a valid confession, genuinely intending to renounce sin, if they deliberately reject, or at best ignore, the clear teaching of the Church, and have no intention of obeying?

What are the chances that a Catholic teenager in an average Catholic parish or Catholic high school will learn to love and live the Catholic Faith, be taught what the Church teaches, and have these teachings reinforced by parents well-formed in the Faith and anxious to pass it on to their child? Will he be acquainted with the powerful resources for spiritual battle and growth in holiness to be found in Catholic Tradition? Will he learn to love the Church, God, and His Son Jesus Christ as His only hope in life and in death? Or will he drift into a life of conformity with the pervasive secularism of the surrounding culture?

Does this state of the Church concern you? Does it concern our priests and bishops, our Holy Father? Are other issues of greater importance? Social justice, perhaps, or the Middle East, or poverty, or race relations? Is the "New Evangelization" more than "business as usual"? Is there a clear call to repentance from specific sins from our priests? Is there a clear account of why the Church teaches what She teaches so that Her doctrines do not seem simply arbitrary?

In Hosea 4:6 we read: "My people perish for lack of knowledge." St. Paul says: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:4) In Ezekiel 34:5, we also read: "And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered." Yet again, in Ezekiel 33:1-6 we read this warning:

And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, 'If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.'" (emphasis added)

And so the voice of the prophet crying in the American wilderness came into the ears of suburban Catholics on January 1, 2009. And the voice said: "Happy New Year. Behold, you are now one year closer to Eternity. It's not the economy, stupid. Repent, you fools!"