It's Up To Us: Don't Let Your Faith Go Out of Business

As the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1930, “A Christian who stays away from the assembly is a contradiction in terms.”  Why is a good Catholic quoting a Lutheran theologian? Brothers and Sisters, these are the times we are living in, and now we must begin to learn to reach out and protect our rights as well as the rights of all people to go to Church.

On Oct. 7, 2020, James Crump wrote an article in the British newspaper, The Independent. In this article, he explained that President Trump claimed that the Democrats wanted to shut down Churches. He cited a video that was played on the air the week before and quoted Eric Trump who said, “This is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Pray for America.”

What got President Trump and his son Eric Trump so upset? It was a video that showed churchgoers being arrested for holding a large outdoor service without wearing face masks or abiding by social distancing measures.

The video was captioned by Cliff Maloney, the president of student activism organization Young Americans for Liberty, who wrote: “If you would have told me in 2019 that we were just 1 year away from Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services, I would have thought you to be insane.”

Arrested for attending Church? Is this America?  

Good questions. Look at the First Amendment and note that the Founding Fathers protected these very same rights in the Bill of Rights. The beginning of the First Amendment states clearly, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...”

By shutting down the Churches are we truly stopping the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) or are we stopping the spread of Christianity? Are we concerned about souls or are we trying to get the souls of people to turn away from God and accept their government as their savior in this scenario? Is this a question of shutting down the Churches around the two most holy celebrations of the year (Easter and Christmas), or was it because of the ultimate goals of the people who are calling the shots?

In many states, Liquor Stores remained open but they still kept the Churches shut down. Additionally, new research by Scientific America has found that an overwhelming amount of coronavirus infections are driven by “super-spreader” events, where a disproportionate number of infected people spread the virus to a much larger number of individuals.

A recent article in the magazine read: “Scientists have identified factors that catalyze such events, including large crowd sizes, close contact between people and confined spaces with poor ventilation.

“Current evidence suggests that it is mostly circumstances such as these, rather than the biology of specific individuals, that sets the stage for the extreme spreading of the novel coronavirus.”

In other words, we cannot have Church, we cannot attend Mass, but we can go to school and go to grocery stores or go shopping and catch the disease, and this is okay because at least we didn't go to that diabolical den of inequality - the Church. 

Brothers and sisters, the Church is not the problem. We are listening and believing somewhat in the fact that we would gain more by listening to the government than God. Is the government in charge of your soul? Will the government help you to get to heaven?  No, no, no.  None of this is true. 

Bishop Fulton Sheen once wrote, “Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops and your religious act like religious.”

In an era where 1 out of every 5 Churches in the US will shut down before the end of 2021, we have a problem - and this problem is not strictly being addressed here. 

I began by quoting a Lutheran theologian and I will end with quoting Bishop Fulton. In the previous quote from Bishop Sheen, we should all be early on board with the understanding that hard times are going to rock the Church.  Rock the Church to its very core.  Did this happen? Is this happening now?  Why is this happening? We must and we shall be vigilant to make sure that our Church doesn’t go the way of the dinosaur.  The choice is yours now, you have been informed and the rest is up to you.