The Killing Joke

Opus Publicum:

This is not to say that I believe the Catholic Church is a joke. It is, rather, the most serious institution ever put on this good earth. That is why it is so terribly depressing to witness those charged with her care, and the care of over a billion souls, treat it poorly. In fact, they treat it so poorly that the Church at times looks like the worst-run NGO on the planet with an intramundane, conventional moralist at the helm. It is little wonder that most Catholics living today have lost sight of the Church’s eschatological horizon and treat the Church’s intellectual patrimony as little more than a rickety bulwark against the rank nihilism which dominates contemporary culture. What else is Catholicism “for”? A once-a-week aesthetic experience; some fleeting guilt over looking too long at Internet pornography or using condoms and the pop psychological chat-in-the-box to rectify it; and a momentary flash of metaphysical superiority that is quickly tucked away by time Monday morning rolls around—that is not what Catholicism truly is; but it is what it has become after more than half-of-century of capitulation to the ways and means of liberalism. What comes next is almost too horrible to contemplate.