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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A Tale of Two Nuns, A Tale of Two Churches

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A Tale of Two Nuns, A Tale of Two Churches

Sister Cristina Sings 'Like a Virgin'

When I first saw this quaint, old photograph of a Catholic nun, playfully teaching a couple of street urchins how to dance a jig, I was surprised by the tears that suddenly began to burn behind my eyes. It’s certainly nothing profound but it says much about what we have lost. Catholic nuns, the old habits, innocent children playing in the street—it’s all gone now, along with  most everything else good, true and beautiful about the world in which we live.

If you don’t understand why my tears somehow make sense then perhaps you never knew the old Catholic Church of which this photograph is a happy reminder. It wasn’t a system of oppressive rules, abusive nuns and holy fools as we’re constantly told it was. In fact, the reality of it bore little resemblance to the Catholic-bashing fairytale we see depicted in the movies and everywhere else with such intensity that even the history we ourselves lived through is in danger of being transformed in the image and likeness of a Godless modern age.  

 

They must edit even recent history because to honestly juxtapose what happened then to what is happening now would be to expose the real dark age--the post-conciliar era. History shames both our brave new world and our brave new Church, which is why it must be rewritten.

Being Catholic in those days wasn’t perfect, life never is. But it was good, full of joy and sadness, priests and sisters, fathers and mothers, rafts of children, sickness and health, festivals, feast days, fasting, God, saints, family, Tradition, and family traditions, so many beautiful traditions that from one year to the next—from one generation to the next—established the quiet, dependable rhythm of an ordered life, a Catholic life in Catholic neighborhoods with all the Catholic fun and folly, going and coming, good and bad, life and death, heaven and hell we could handle.

I wish someone could tell me what exactly the Church of Vatican II has given us that would cause anyone to seriously argue we’re better off now than we were when this photograph was taken. What has the new evangelization done for you lately? The New Mass? The New Springtime? 

Let us consider another Catholic nun, a modern Catholic nun, a second generation Vatican II Catholic nun, totally bereft of the sensus catholicus, singing a pop song that mocks virginity and was made famous by a Christophobic fallen away Catholic named Madonna:
:

Sister Cristina is a member of the Ursuline Sisters of the Holy Family in Milan
, Italy.  She is part of the abomination of desolation spawned by the Spirit of Vatican II. She is a walking,  breathing metaphor for the modern Catholic Church with all of its lost faith, abandoned traditions, emasculated priests, abused children, jaded adults, lousy music, rock star popes, and a liturgy unfit for kindergartners.

Sister Cristina knows nothing of the old Catholic world,
 the Latin Mass, Catholic culture, Catholic music and the beautiful Catholic nuns in their great, big packed-out Catholic school buildings— forming whole generations of decent-living, God-fearing, more or less well-adjusted human beings. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, mothers, fathers, men in ties and jackets, women in skirts and hats—the civilized and moral inhabitants of the last vestiges of the old  Catholic world that the whole of modernity rose up like the beast of the Apocalypse to destroy.

Those days were far from perfect but they were nothing if not vastly superior to our present days of darkness, broken homes, shattered altars, pop star nuns, and aborted babies.

Really, what did we get in exchange for the grand and glorious ‘Catholic Thing’ we knew as kids?  What do we have now in this bizarre new springtime of Vatican II that can possibly compare to what we had then? Eucharistic ministers? Pedophile priests? Altar girls? Nuns on the bus? Broken homes? Shuttered churches? Sold convents?

What’s left of that old world besides Catholic names on rusty street signs, faded photographs on Google, and empty churches… so many empty churches.

I’m so tired of Vatican II, the new Mass, the “humble” pope, the silly, oversexed new theology and the self-loathing attitudes of my absentminded co-religionists who seem to have forgotten  all about what it was to be Catholic back in the day. They like Sister Cristina and they adore Pope Francis because he lets them off the hook.

There's no place for old Catholics in the modern Church.  For us, nowhere is now here. Traditionalists are the last of the Catholics who still remember, who have not forgotten and who long for a return of the old ways. For us, the modern Church has simply ceased to matter.

God, please, wake us from this nightmare, deliver your Church from this captivity in the desert of modernsim, and restore to your people the Catholic promised land that has been in the hands of your worst enemies for a long, long time.



Last modified on Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Michael J. Matt | Editor

Michael J. Matt has been an editor of The Remnant since 1990. Since 1994, he has been the newspaper's editor. A graduate of Christendom College, Michael Matt has written hundreds of articles on the state of the Church and the modern world. He is the host of The Remnant Underground and Remnant TV's The Remnant Forum. He's been U.S. Coordinator for Notre Dame de Chrétienté in Paris--the organization responsible for the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, France--since 2000.  Mr. Matt has led the U.S. contingent on the Pilgrimage to Chartres for the last 24 years. He is a lecturer for the Roman Forum's Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera, Italy. He is the author of Christian Fables, Legends of Christmas and Gods of Wasteland (Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll) and regularly delivers addresses and conferences to Catholic groups about the Mass, home-schooling, and the culture question. Together with his wife, Carol Lynn and their seven children, Mr. Matt currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.