The shutdown/lockdown of many Catholic churches during COVID was an ugly shock to practicing Catholics, who count on the weekly/daily Mass, most notably the Eucharist, for their entire well-being.  You wouldn’t have to look far (with doubtless some noble exceptions) to see the hand of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in the reactionary and unfaithful COVID response that shut down Catholic worship, for years in many cases.

The COVID lockdowns/closures are now sometimes argued as subterfuge against the people by the “deep state.”  Absent a definitive understanding of the COVID threat then (still the case), many Catholics bent the knee -- not in their churches anymore, but out of respect for the USCCB, as the final word in its urging of the faithful to comply with the church shutdowns.

See this public message from the USCCB Administrative Committee, March 9,2021:

“Renewed by this season of Lent, we, the members of the Administrative Committee, place our confidence in the Lord, who suffered, was crucified, and is resurrected. We join our brother bishops in urging everyone to continue to keep God’s love alive in their hearts and in their families and communities. And we look forward to welcoming the Catholic faithful back when we all may safely participate physically in the Eucharistic celebration of the Mass and gather once more in our parishes."

Catholic churches are still closing permanently, mostly credited to the COVID closures.

Now, post-COVID, we have reports of mounting Catholic persecution at many levels, to an extent never seen in this country.  There have been reports of FBI intimidation of Catholics by threating visits to their own homes; and, recently in Massachusetts, the reported denial of foster care parent-applicants to access the state’s foster care program, expressly due to the fact the applicants are Catholic; the prioritized violence against Catholic pro-life centers; the arrests of people silently praying the rosary in public; the growing desecration of Catholic statues and churches, etc.

I propose that if Catholics must deal with this encroaching hostility, they must first consider the sources of information they rely upon as Catholics. To that point, most Catholics in the United States have no clear understanding of what authority the USCCB actually has.  The very liberal ideology which has permeated the USCCB for generations, and greatly influenced its communications to Catholics and at large, may be in some respects itself responsible for the growing vulnerability of the Catholic population. The irony here is that the pronouncements of the USCCB as communications to the faithful, except when voted on unanimously, have zero formal standing in the Catholic Church.

In Pope John Paul II’s, “Apostolos Suos,” paragraph 2, the Holy Father states that bishops’ conferences may only publish doctrinal declarations when they are “approved unanimously,” but “a majority alone” is not enough for publication without the approval of the Vatican.

In the same document cited above, the Pope also maintained that a bishops’ conference cannot hinder an individual bishop’s authority in his diocese “by substituting themselves inappropriately for him, where the canonical legislation does not provide for a limitation of his episcopal power in favor of the episcopal conference.”

Earlier, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, issued some similar statements:

“Cardinal Ratzinger, who in the same year expressed his changed view on episcopal conferences in a book-length interview with V. Messori (The Ratzinger Report, 1985), insisting that episcopal conferences lack a theological basis, are not part of the unalterable structure as willed by Christ, and have only a practical function.”

United States Catholics are now up against a similar situation (in confusing the messages of the USCCB, a famously bureaucratic D.C.-based organization) as dictates -- as we all now have in allowing the federal unelected administrative state to set some policy and law for the nation.  Unfortunately, Catholics for the most part don’t see the double church-state bind in which they can become entangled. They think the USCCB oversees their local bishop. This is simply not, and never has been, the case.

The U.S. Catholic public, including the notoriously self-justified “elite” Catholic politicians, e.g., Biden, Pelosi, Buttigieg, and so on, can refer to the liberal and even progressive communications coming out of the USCCB as information which delegitimizes the direction of their local bishops.

Alternatively, our cultural “leaders” just parlay USCCB’s communications, when those seemingly make room for an otherwise heretical stance. (Some progressive local bishops on the ground may also interpret the USCCB releases as cannon fodder.)

Whatever Pelosi or Biden or Buttigieg or various Hollywood luminaries, or anyone else, may spout from their bully pulpits regarding the ingenuities of his/her or “our” (see “our democracy”), Catholic faith, check your sources. Make critical decisions. Wake up.  Take up the shield of your faith and be sure to read the fine print of the Church’s teaching.  Do not confuse “atheism” as the opposite of “religion”; rather, “atheism” is truly the opposite of “theism.” (“Religion” is a loose-goosey term better left in the closet where it can culturally molder away.)

When fighting for the formal principles of the Catholic Church, or indeed of Christianity at its source, use your reason as well as your faith:

“Catholicism professes that what we believe in faith and what we discover by reason are not only compatible but also mutually beneficial. God is the source of both faith and reason, and there is no contradiction in God. Both faith and reason lead us to the one Truth who is God.”

Image: Luca Giordano