ELEISON COMMENTS CLXIV (Sept. 4, 2010) : *RAMPANT REALITY.*
"But, your Excellency, how can you possibly declare (EC 163) that the Lord
God is the one true solution for all social problems of a big modern city,
such as your friend presented them to you in his own city three weeks ago ?
What does God have to do with politics or social problems ? I always
thought He was only concerned with things like religion and spirituality !"
Ah, my dear friend, who is God ? Not only did He Himself create the soul of
each one of us and the matter out of which our parents put together our
bodies, but also He *goes on creating them* for every moment that they
continue and will continue to exist. He is thus closer to each of us human
beings than we are to ourselves. So the Church teaches that any offence
against our neighbor is first and foremost an offence against God, because
He is more deeply and closely within us than we are in ourselves. So whoever
offends neighbor, offends more deeply God, and whoever never offends God
will not offend his neighbor. If then in the parish and school of the
Society of St Pius X (EC 163) parishioners and children learn to put God
first and His Ten Commandments, are they not learning to solve all big city
problems, between neighbor and neighbor, at their root ?
Let us recall the social problems of my friend's big city. In the outlying
suburbs mostly white people are living beyond their means in falsely
luxurious mansions. They wish to appear rich, and dream of being rich. Are
they not worshipping materialism and Mammon, i.e. money? What is taught on
the contrary in the parish ? "You cannot worship God and Mammon. It is one
or the other" (Mt.VI, 24). In the inner suburbs, mostly non-white people to
a large extent neglect their housing, to the despair of city planners, no
doubt. But is it not a similar form of materialism to measure the good life
or the goodness of souls by the maintenance of one's housing ? Cleanliness
may be next to godliness, as the saying goes, but what do the parishioners
learn ?-"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these
things will be added unto you" (Mt.VI, 33). In other words, seek godliness
first, and the cleanliness will follow.
Finally in the inner city the city's industrial life-blood is ebbing away.
Why ? Is it not capitalism itself that, in pursuit of greater profits by
the subordination of industry to finance, has out-sourced American industry
? Is it not the putting of money before men that is causing the ever
worsening unemployment, the de-populating of the city-centres and the
transfer of all power to the money-men who are using that power to transform
faster and faster the once proud United States into just one humiliated part
of their global police-state ?
How could it happen ? By the whites turning away from God, resigning (as my
friend implied) from their God-given mission to lead the world to Him, and
by their worshipping Mammon instead as the supreme reality. Long may the
little parish and school of the Society of St. Pius X, outside the city,
make the supremacy of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, rampant !
Kyrie eleison