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From Political Correctness to Catholic Correctness

Lucien Pissarro. The Church at Gisors.
(Lucien Pissarro. The Church at Gisors. Source)

Note: This text by Mr. Gilles BARIBEAU first appeared  in the Le Soleil newspaper on August 13, 2002.

It looks good in office or living room conversations to stick to mainstream ideas and to well-worn clichés, in order to avoid confrontations and debates with contrary, and hence minority opinions. And lo and behold, this smashingly fashionable virus of political correctness is infiltrating itself covertly into people who still dare claim they are Catholics, by making them come out with this new mentality of Catholic Correctness.

The catalog of Catholic Correctness is well stocked, and is strangely similar to the one for Political Correctness. I will list it here in the format of Commandments:

1) Thou shalt systematically oppose thyself to all orders coming from Rome.

2) Thou shalt consider homosexual acts as perfectly normal.

3) Thou shalt accept abortion as a decision belonging to women.

4) Thou shalt not speak of sin anymore, but just of lack of love. Therefore, the private confession of one's sins to a priest won't be necessary anymore.

5) Thou shalt not miss an opportunity to mock priests who still wear a roman collar, and nuns who still dress with distinctive clothing.

6) Thou shalt campain for the abolition of priestly celibacy and for women's ordination.

7) Thou shalt not speak of chastity anymore, but only of freedom in sexual matters.

8) Thou shalt not consider Sunday Mass as a Sacrament of the presence of Christ among us, but more like a symbolic meal of the community gathered around its pastor.

9) Thou shalt not hesitate to destroy a marriage which inhibits your growth, or to quench your lust in the arms of a person you are not married to.

10) Thou shalt not drag yourself down with many children which might harm the advancement of your career.

This new Code of conduct is imposing itself more and more as the de facto law, up to the point where faithful like myself and many others, who still obey Rome, are considered as old-fashioned and disconnected from today's reality. These people who respect the traditional teachings of the Church and want to bear witness to them, are having more and more run ins with many accomodating priests and Bishops who have joined the liberal mainstream. This religious liberalism, which closely tracks political and economical liberalism, runs the mid-term risk of wiping Catholicism off the map in Quebec, a Province whose moral decadence is one of the worst in the Western world. Moreover, this liberal thrust is on the verge of causing another division in the Church, after the painful Orthodox and Protestant ones. The only person who can avoid this third bloody division is none other than John-Paul II. Which explains his determination to remain on duty right to the end. I cannot see on the horizon any other man whose personality could be strong enough to maintain under the same roof the opposed forces of conservatives and liberals inside the Catholic Church. But the Holy Spirit has not said His last word yet.

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