by PAUL COLLITS – THE Catholic Weekly recently published an article with the headline “COVID-19 did a number on Mass attendance in Australia”.
The report by Marilyn Rodrigues was wrong. It wasn’t COVID that “did a number” on churchgoing.
- They – at least some of them – encourage large families.
- They oppose the convenience-killing of the aged.
- They promote the family, the great enemy of Marxists.
It was the State’s groundless, ludicrous, indeed wicked, demands on citizens and institutions – and the supine compliance of those citizens and institutions in response.
Church attendance numbers, already anemic, are now in desperate decline.
According to Marilyn Rodrigues’ article, the number of Catholics who attended Mass fell from 11.8 per cent to 8.2 per cent between 2016 and 2021, with every diocese recording falls in attendance.
DECLINE
The average number of typical Mass goers declined by about a third, falling from 623,400 to 417, 350 during the period which was marked by lockdowns and restrictions on worship.
The Bishop of Lismore Paul Homeming (pictured above) might get thousands of hits on his weekly online Mass these days. But his cathedral is now even emptier than it was before.
Sorry, but watching Mass on the TV isn’t Mass. And no – again – the “new normal” isn’t the result of the plandemic.
When you are told for around three thousand years that the Sabbath is holy and must be kept that way – and then suddenly, you are told it is all contingent on government edicts, well, it is enough to shake your faith.
Especially when they allowed Bunnings to open. Supermarkets, I get. But Bunnings and not churches?
Many of the edicts were both head-scratchingly stupid and based on lies.
This example of evil-tinged madness was serious. It concerns the eternal fate of immortal souls.
EMPTY
There are consequences here far beyond empty pews.
Some observers got onto the seriousness of the closures very early. RR Reno, editor of First Things, wrote this on March 17, 2020 (St Patrick’s Day): “Cancelling church services is the wrong response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“When we worship, we join the Christian rebellion against the false lordship of the principalities and powers that claim to rule our lives, including sickness and death. This does not mean carelessness about our health, nor does it mean indifference to the health of others.
“Instead, it means that as Christians we have higher priorities. Our end is in God.
“Closing churches and cancelling services betrays its duty of spiritual care.”
Indeed, Reno nailed the core problem: “Suspending the sacraments suggests that the Church lives in accord with the world’s priorities.”
Yes, simply conceding ground to the State was ominous. And, par for the course these days.
Is it a stretch to think that the same malign secularists who saw merit in creating a pandemic – for created it was – in the cause of depopulation, might have seen merit in diminishing the practice of the Christian faith?
OPPOSE
Churches are the bane of the political class. They oppose abortion and (in some cases) birth control. They run religious schools, very much in the firing line at the minute for their alleged homophobia and transphobia.
They – at least some of them – encourage large families.
They oppose the convenience-killing of the aged. They promote the family, the great enemy of Marxists.
Wiping out intermediary institutions that stand between the State and the individual has long been the game plan of the globalists and their fellow travellers.
Just about every single example of dissident push-back during COVID has been proven to be correct.
Lockdowns didn’t work. They were lethal at worst, dangerous at best. Trial vaccines are killing people. They didn’t work and they weren’t needed.
We already had perfectly good cures for COVID, demonised at the time in the service of Big Pharma’s crooks.
PCR tests were a scam. Masks don’t work either. Science was being willfully shut down.
I wonder if the political police and the COVID fascist governments they served would have taken on some of the bigger churches, had they shown similar cojones.
There isn’t much mystery to why Church numbers are going over the cliff.PC
An accurate and good description. Certainly, the government, with the terrified support of the media manipulated masses, would have metaphorically, and perhaps literally, burnt the non conforming churches down. But martyrs, the heroes and saints of the Church, have normally had their martyrdom supported by the masses. And the truth has also normally eventually proved the martyrs right.
“Church attendance numbers, already anemic, are now in desperate decline.
According to Marilyn Rodrigues’ article, the number of Catholics who attended Mass fell […]”
Don’t conflate roman catholicism with Christianity, as they are two entirely different things. Christians know that salvation is the free gift of God, and that it is on the basis of personal faith in Christ’s atoning death and subsequent resurrection (as the apostle Paul said “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification”), whereas catholics claim that salvation is by baptism into their religion and subsequent continuances in their so-called teachings, including obedience to the ten commandments (and, as the apostle Paul pointed out “[…] a person is not justified by the works of the law […]”).
The pope, arrogant and impenitent as he is, will go down to his reward in Hades just as all his predecessors have done. He will stand naked before God at the judgement, and for his many sins he will be cast into the Lake of Fire, in which he shall remain for all eternity (as it is written, it is a place “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”).