“Be brave and try to detach your heart from worldly things”

“Be brave and try to detach your heart from worldly things.
Do your utmost to banish darkness from your mind and come to understand
what true, selfless piety is.
Through confession, endeavor to purify your heart of anything which
may still taint it.
Enliven your faith, which is essential to understand and achieve piety.”
St. John Bosco

(Notre Dame pre fire / Julie Cook / 2018)

Yesterday, I wrote a post about a Catholic priest from Wisconsin,
Fr. Altman, who is being relieved of his duties by his bishop.
The bishop states that Fr. Altman is both “divisive and ineffective.”

The real reason for his removal is due to his publicly stating that
one cannot be a true Catholic while supporting abortion…
one cannot be a true Catholic and a democrat.

That was a comment directed to both then presidential candidate
Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Two politicians who espouse to be practicing Catholics yet
are both very vocal regarding their support for abortion.

Support for abortion is a stance that is in direct opposition
to the teachings of the Church.
Or so we thought…

Fr. Altman was also very critical of fellow prelates who would deny their flock
communion during the course of the pandemic.

Father Altman doubled down on his stance despite the threats from the Church
hierarchy.
“Jesus warned the Apostles and us that if the world hated him,
it would hate us, just because we are trying to be faithful.
In other words, the world will be divided by the truth,” he continued.
“There will be we who are faithful, who follow the truth,
divided from those who are not faithful and who oppose the truth.”

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-fr-altmans-bishop-has-asked-him-to-resign

My post brought about a powerful comment from our biology leaning friend IB
(aka Insanity bytes)

I don’t think she will mind if I share that comment here:

Good stuff, Julie! This really triggered me,
“other shepherds are offended because I simply state
the fact that they abandoned their sheep in a time of need.”

Yep!

My church stayed open, never wavered even when things got heated,
so I was really blessed!
Just the same, every church around me shut down and some are
still shut today.
It’s been such a huge betrayal,
such a feeling abandonment that goes all the way down to my toes.
I had always thought the church would be there for us,
the church is our refuge when an asteroid is heading right for us
or a global pandemic comes.
I did not expect to see so many collapse and abandon their
people immediately.
A church who is not there for her people during hard times
is not a church. A two week quarantine is understandable,
forgivable.
But more than a year?
Get off my planet!

Obviously I got some powerful feelings about all this. 🙂

My response was a resounding AMEN!

It is a betrayal really.
A betrayal by those who’s calling has been to be the very
shepherds and polestars…those who are charged with directing souls
to the risen Savior.
And as IB states so succinctly, it has been a total collapse.
A collapse of the very institution that has been charged
with spreading the very Word of Salvation.

My response to IB:
“Indeed IB— if the Church—as in our sanctuaries, our places of refuge,
our earthly tangible connection to Jesus himself…
if they lock us out during our very hour of need—
if they remain(ed) silent when seniors were shut away from all family
with many dying isolated and alone,
if they refused communion to a spiritually hungry fold or if they
side(d) with death rather than life—
that is not the Bride of Christ as we know her.
Shepherds of the world or shepherds of Christ—
they need to truly ask who it is they serve!!!

When I think of our Church, our bulwark never failing,
I am always reminded of the scene from that classic 1939 movie
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with the cries of Quasimodo “SANCTUARY”…
meaning one is safe and protected within the walls of the Church…
the Church will protect those who seek her aid…

Here is a scene from one of the greatest films of the 1930s.
The gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O’Hara) has been sentenced to
hang for witchcraft in front of Notre Dame cathedral by
the Chief Justice (Sir Cedric Hardwicke).
She is saved from certain death by the cathedral bell-ringer Quasimodo
(Charles Laughton) to the delight of Gringoire,
who loves her (played by a young Edmond O’Brien) and given sanctuary.

And so if the Church now decides to side with the world…our
sanctuary… our help in ages past and hope for years to come,
has become just another victim, lost to the cancel culture wars…

“Whenever that sacrifice of Christ is memorialized in the Church,
there is an application to a new moment in time and a new presence
in space of the unique sacrifice of Christ Who is now in glory.
In obeying His mandate, His followers would be representing in
an unbloody manner that which He presented to His Father in the
bloody sacrifice of Calvary.
After changing the bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood:
He gave it to them (Mark 14:22).
By that communion they were made one with Christ,
to be offered with Him, in Him, and by Him.
All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the
human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh,
so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of
the soul and Christ in communion.”
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, p. 401-2
An Excerpt From
Life of Christ

sanctuary

Sanctuary, on a personal level,
is where we perform the job of taking care of our soul.”
Christopher Forrest McDowell

(interior of the Cathedral of Notre Dame / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

The first time I was made aware of the concept of sanctuary…
as in the meaning of the word as a verb of action verses a noun of place,
was when, as a little girl, I watched the 1939 movie the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
It didn’t matter that it was an old black and white movie made 20 years before I was born…
it was and still remains, just as the original story itself, a classic.

This 1939 classic starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara, based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, left a powerful and lasting impression on my youthful mind.
That being…
a church, The Church, can protect anyone asking it to…

Maureen O’Hara played the role of Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsy girl, falsely accused of practicing witchcraft as well as murder.
Charles Laughton played the deformed bell keeper, Quasimodo, who had fallen in love with the beautiful Esmeralda.

One of the pivotal and overtly theatrical moments in the film is when Esmeralda, whose hands are bound as a rope hangs around her neck, is being led to the gallows on a horse drawn cart as she is about to be publicly hung for the crimes of witchcraft and murder.
A huge procession marches forth from the church as choirs sing and bells toll…for the people of Paris have gathered to witness the public hanging of this poor young girl.

Quasimodo, who is perched high aloft along the ledge of the bell tower, looks down at the proceedings and grabs hold of a rope…
Miraculously to the astonished crowd, Quasimodo swings down, just in the nick of time, grabbing Esmeralda from the clutches of the gallows master. He then swings back up to the safety of both bell tower and Church where, holding a now limp Esmeralda who has fainted…he lifts her high over his head for all the crowd to see while crying out “Sanctuary, Sanctuary…”
Letting all those gathered below know that the girl in now safe within the arms of the church because those who enter a church, seeking sanctuary, are protected from the masses and the authorities outside the walls of her building’s structure.

The concept of a church, the physical structure, offering safety to those at risk… resonated deeply in my thoughts….
As it seems that for centuries the collective body of The Church has been a place of protection and safety to not only our spiritual beings, but to our physical being as well.

Yesterday, when reading a recent news article about the growing security worries now facing our churches and places of worship, I imagined that moment long ago of Quasimodo yelling “Sanctuary”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/08/churches-take-new-security-measures-in-face-terror-threats.html

Back in April, it seems that during a daily worship service at an Orthodox Church in Riverside, California, several young mothers had excused themselves from the service as they carried their crying infants outside as not to disturb the remainder of the service.
As the women stood outside the church chatting, while holding their babies, a car appears out of the blue pulling up close to the sidewalk where the women stood.
The windows of the car are rolled down as several men with bullhorns hang out from the windows and are heard to shout Allauh Akbar…
The startled women stare in disbelief while holding their children tightly to their chests…
all the while as a feeling of dread washes over them.
And yet just as quickly as the car appeared, it drives off leaving the women shaken.

Since this incident in April, numerous houses of worship, churches and synagogues around the globe have had similar unsettling incidents to occur—
Most notably being the recent attack on Father Jaques Hamel.
The attack took place in a quiet catholic church on the outskirts of Rouen, when two young men interrupted the service grabbing Fr Hamel and slashing his throat in front of horrified parishioners.

There have also been reported acts of vandalism, break-ins and incidents where churches have received anonymous written threats of violence.

But attacks on Churches and Synagogues is sadly nothing new.

Our houses of worship, although representing something much larger and greater than mere man himself, can fall victim to acts of evil intent just as easily as the average person.

In times past, just as in this present time, there have been fire bombings on buildings, desecrations of buildings, attacks and sadly murders on both clergy and parishioners…
As it is becoming much more alarming and worrisome that these sorts of incidents are on the rise…
No longer seemingly the random act of evil and madness, but now more and more the deliberate growing act of hatred.

Whereas there was a time when the Church as a whole was revered and respected, a place in which the lost, the sorrowful and the frightened could find refuge….
that simply is no longer the expected given.

Yet whereas the building and the bodies of believers themselves may come under attack—we are not without hope—for the blood of the Lamb remains our refuge and sanctuary no matter what may befall a physical building or our physical body…

SANCTUARY indeed!!!!

‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.’
Ezekiel 11:16