Fr, Mark A. Pilon, a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, who received a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from Santa Croce University in Rome, wrote an essay today at The Catholic Thing.org, entitled: How Will History Judge Us?
In it, he draws a compelling parallel between the Weimark Republic (had it not become the Third Reich) and the German bishops of today, thence between the German bishops and our own American Catholic bishops.
Suppose Germany from the early 1930s through 1945 had remained the (democratic) Weimar Republic rather than become the Third Reich, a one-party dictatorship. Also suppose that many democratically elected representatives from various liberal and conservative parties had signed on to and advanced the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis and Hitler. Further suppose that even Catholic elected parliamentarians from the opposition parties joined with the Nazi Party and voted to advance the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question, and publicly supported its implementation. Just suppose, for argument’s sake, that all of this was historical fact.Now, let’s go further and suppose that the German bishops had taken no action to discipline those Catholic politicians, in whatever parties, either by excommunication or denying them the sacraments. (We know that disciplinary action has recently been enforced by German bishops for simply refusing to pay the Church tax by not registering as Catholics with the government.) But suppose no such disciplines were enforced back in those evil days, and suppose polls were taken showing that more and more German Catholics were either confused on this grave moral issue or actually had begun to support genocidal racial policies...
For the past fifty years, the Catholic laity in America have heard very clear condemnations of the monstrous crime of abortion from their bishops. But at the same time, they have witnessed prominent Catholic politicians openly supporting abortion rights and fighting efforts to restrict those rights – some even defending the outrages of Planned Parenthood, about which several bishops have spoken out, but done little else. Meanwhile, the dissenting politicians continue to call themselves faithful Catholics and receive Communion publicly, sometimes from the hands of their own bishops...
How will history judge this generation of Church leaders when this human carnage finally ends? How will future generations of Catholics judge this generation’s spiritual leaders if they look back and see that that no Catholic leader was ever disciplined for voting for and positively supporting not only abortion, but now the perversion of the institution of marriage? The same Catholic politicos who have supported the right to terminate innocent lives of the unborn are now supporting the rights of homosexuals to marry and even calling on the Church to change her teaching. Undoubtedly, next will come euthanasia rights disguised as mercy.
