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I think,
however, that your comments on the futility of protest are wrong and are
not in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. You seem to
think that the only response Christians can or should make to injustice is
to pray. If Moses had had that idea, the children of Israel would still be
in bondage in Egypt. Where would the world be if Solidarity had not challenged
the Soviet Empire—with the full support of Pope John Paul II? Should
African Americans have just stayed home in the 1950s and waited for white
people to get their acts together?
Should we never go and pray in front of the abortuaries and instead just
stay home while children are murdered?
Be wary of being an apologist and defender of evil and injustice by recommending
political “quietism.”
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 oses led the Israelites from slavery
in Egypt without any protest at all. He simply did what God told him to do.
He went to Pharaoh and asked politely to let his people go. When Pharaoh
refused, Moses prayed. God then sent a plague on Egypt. Moses went back and
asked Pharaoh again to let his people go. Pharaoh refused again. Moses prayed
again. And he suffered greatly—through the mistreatment inflicted on
the Israelites. So it went. Requests, refusals, sufferings, plagues, and
prayers. Until finally Pharaoh got tired of it all and told Moses good
riddance.
So, as Moses learned, real prayer
depends on total trust in God in the midst of
suffering; it’s hard
work.[1]
Listen to what Jesus told Saint Faustina.
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 My daughter, I want to instruct
you on how you are to rescue souls through sacrifice and prayer. You will
save more souls through prayer and suffering than a missionary will through
his teachings and sermons alone. I want to see you as a sacrifice of living
love, which only then carries any weight before Me. You must be annihilated,
destroyed, living as if you were dead in the most secret depths of your
being. . . . Outwardly, your sacrifice must look like this:
silent, hidden, permeated with love, imbued with
prayer. . . .
I will now instruct
you on what your holocaust shall consist of, in everyday life, so as to preserve
you from illusions. You shall accept all sufferings with
love. Do not be afflicted if your heart often
experiences repugnance and dislike for sacrifice. All its power rests in
the will, and so these contrary feelings, far from lowering the value of
sacrifice in My eyes, will enhance it. Know that your body and soul will
often be in the midst of fire. Although you will not feel My presence on
some occasions, I will always be with you. Do not
fear; My grace will be with
you. . .
—as told to Saint Faustina,
Diary, 1767 |
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Protest?
Now, you ask where we would be
without protest. Well, look at where we are now,
with it: we are in a world growing increasingly self-indulgent,
increasingly secular, increasingly cynical, increasingly antagonistic,
increasingly cold, increasingly brutal, increasingly
evil. In today’s world,
not a day goes by that someone isn’t protesting something. Moreover, in the
midst of all this sin, look at all the wasted time
that could be spent in prayer. Look at all the hours wasted watching TV and movies,
playing video games, surfing the Internet, chatting and texting on mobile
devices, and posting images of vainglory on social networks. If all that time were
spent in prayer, it would be a different world.
Real Prayer
Why isn’t all that time
spent in prayer? Because real prayer is hard and demanding. It requires
disciplined self-sacrifice and
humility. It’s far easier to wave a banner
in the face of an opponent than to empty yourself in sacrifice before God by living
a holy life. Protest feels good. Protest, like junk food,
is satisfying—or, at least it gives the
illusion that it is.
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Thus we reach
the ultimate irony that your protesting the fraud of the world only makes
you part of the fraud. |
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Real Change
If you want to change the world,
renounce the box of social illusion
and fraud. Living outside the box is not a form of political
quietism; it is not a matter of sitting back and
doing nothing about the social corruption about you. We must do something—but
that “something” must be based in love, not politics. Do what Jesus did.
He never protested anything. He prayed, and He trusted in
God, totally.
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It was no more an
act of protest when Jesus drove the money changers from the temple than it is an
act of protest to sweep dirt off your kitchen floor. |
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So if you want to change the
world, “do something” through love by living a
holy lifestyle.
• |
Pray
constantly. |
• |
Live a lifestyle of
humility and chastity. |
• |
Read
and study to learn what the true faith really is. |
• |
Witness
your faith in public by refusing to do anything that contradicts the true
faith. |
• |
Dress
modestly. |
• |
Give Catholic money a voice. Avoid
spending your money on anything, especially entertainment,
that brainwashes you into abandoning the true faith. |
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Purge
lust from your life. |
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Renounce competition
and vainglory, especially in sports. |
Real prayer is a
battle—not a battle against other persons but a battle
against the demonic powers of evil. Prayer is more than
just saying the words. Prayer is a lifestyle that
must be lived constantly, in every moment. Because of fear
you call such a lifestyle “quietism.” Like the rich young
man who walked away from Christ (see Matthew 19:16–24), you’re content to keep
the “law” externally but you fear to “sell all that you
have” for the sake of following Christ from the depths of your heart in the great
spiritual battle against demonic influence.
Notes
1. Genuine Christian prayer can have aspects of
passive contemplation, but that simply means that the soul remains passive
while God’s grace actively works within it (as Saint John of the Cross
made clear in his Dark Night of the Soul). The
fruits of prayer, however, are very real
and very tangible. This website, for example, is the fruit of prayer. Missionary
work can be prayer. And keeping a vigil before an
abortion facility can be prayer—as long as
the vigil is quiet and peaceful and does not aim to make itself seen.
Once you address your actions to the world, rather than to God, you set aside
the humility of prayer and step into the
pride and narcissism of
protest.
The text of
this webpage, integrated with other material from my websites,
has been conveniently organized into a paperback book of 350 pages, including
a comprehensive index.
 |
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Though Demons Gloat: They Shall Not Prevail
by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.
Though we are attacked by liberal activists from without and by apostasy
from within, the true Church—that is, the body of those who remain
faithful to Church tradition—weeps, and she prays, because she knows
the fate of those who oppose God.
Our enemies might fear love, and they can push love
away, but they can’t kill it. And so the battle against them cannot be
fought with politics; it requires a profound personal struggle against
the immorality of popular culture. The battle must be fought in the
service of God with pure and chaste lifestyles lived from the depths of
our hearts in every moment.
Ordering Information |
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