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What we see is that male and female are meant for one another, and indeed are what they are, only because they are for one another; otherwise they have no meaning at all. If this is not obvious, then nothing in Creation is; and if nothing in Creation is, we may as well give up on all notions of seeing the fingerprint of God in the created world. It is all confusion. And if male and female are but arbitrary areas of human convention, rather than solid, dependable, and obvious created realities, then why should we call God “Father,” as Jesus instructs us to do?

Our salvation – yours and mine – does not happen out there, in some other place or in someone else’s life. It doesn’t occur in the media or latest gossip, online or otherwise. It doesn’t depend on our knowing the latest political intrigue or celebrity news. It depends on our personal and interior adherence to the Lord.

The disconnect between marriage and procreation, along with the equating of various forms of “relationships” to traditional marriage, have their consequences among Catholics, too. If we are to read “the signs of the times” as to who is and who isn’t having children, then perhaps it’s a moment for Catholics to abandon their timidity and, as many others falsely claim, to speak “prophetically.”

Cultural knowledge is evaporating, so – let’s make sure that missives from bishops use the lingo of contemporary journalism, vaporous and ridden with cliches, and let’s discourage priests from spending time to unfold the meaning of Scripture.

Then, there is distortion of mission. The USCCB spends something like $1 million per year on evangelization and catechesis, $1 million on Catholic education, and $2 million on pro-life work. It certainly gives no appearance of being a major advocate of tax relief for Catholic parents who want to send their children to Catholic schools. And yet Vatican II teaches explicitly that parents do not enjoy a right to religious liberty if they have to pay twice to educate their children.

Not infrequently, we are told that technology, too, with special reference to such things as the laptop and the smart phone, is morally neutral. It all depends on how we use it. With my iPhone, I can type this essay, or I can find pornography. I can file my taxes, or I can gamble away my savings. I can call my friend for a long-overdue conversation, or I can scroll the hours away on the troubled, manicured seas of social media. The choice is mine. How will I use this thing which money and cunning have set in my pocket?

Whenever the Roman Canon of the Mass is celebrated, there is also a celebration of the saints, dozens of whom are invoked by the priest at the altar. Among these saints are seven women: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, Agnes, and Anastasia. These holy women were martyred during the third and fourth centuries and are justly celebrated by the Church during the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

When the two disciples who encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the others of their astounding experience, they heard the words: “Yes, it is true, Jesus has risen from the dead.” That is the very foundation of our faith. If, as one inane clergyman said many years ago, the Resurrection was merely a “conjuring trick with bones,” then we should all eat, drink, and be merry and, perhaps, become Hare Krishna devotees. Yes, it is true: Christ is risen, and all has changed.

There is another consideration. The peculiar nature of the gesture—kneeling to receive Communion—enters the memory as specifically bound up with the act of the Sacrament and with the place where you receive. Again, it is not like anything else we do during the week. To kneel at the rail is to be at a certain place, not for a mere moment, but perhaps for a minute or so, long enough to say a prayer, long enough to think of something you ought to have done, or something you ought not to have done, long enough—and if it is every Sunday, frequent enough—to make that place, that rail and no other, filled with significance. I mean the word in its precise sense: the place becomes a sign.

The only way to evangelize the modern pagan world today would be once again through the family. If we do not realize this, then our enemies do—and that is why they are trying to undermine and destroy the family which stands in the way of the neo-pagan world they want to reconstitute. Here, selflessness is replaced by selfishness, love is replaced by lust, and doing God’s will is replaced by doing your own will: doing whatever you want, in whatever way you want, whenever you want. It may be too late for the wild geese to save Rome this time round, for the barbarians are already within the gates! But it is not too late for the families who once transformed a pagan world into a Catholic world to do so once more—and this time to make sure that the forces of evil do not reemerge to destroy it, or at least distort and disunite what once had been one in Christ.

What’s happened to our first freedom, especially the rights of morally traditional believers who have given so much to our nation? Their religious beliefs are portrayed as hateful, and their religious freedom as a front for bigots, racists, and theocrats. This slander has been embedded in all our institutions – our schools, the media, Big Tech, the sports and entertainment industry, the medical profession, our foreign policy, and even our military. This is a threat not only to the religious, but to the Constitution, and to America’s singular role in the world. The recent election results may blunt this threat, but political change alone cannot defeat it. It’s too deeply rooted in our cultural institutions.

The only question that matters this Advent is whether Jesus Christ is really who the Epistle of James claims he is: the center of history, the Lord of creation, the God of life who warrants the passion of our hearts. In the time we’ve been given, are we living in AD 2024 or 2024 CE; in Anno Domini, “the year of Our Lord,” or just another 12 months in a morally vacant “Common Era.” We each get to choose – and to act accordingly.

We must be under no illusions as Christians. It is not business as usual, keeping quiet, keeping our heads down, hoping none of the encroaching darkness will overwhelm us. What if you are a doctor, or nurse, or some other kind of medical professional, and you are expected to participate in this? What if you get sick or incapacitated and your relatives decide it’s time for you to go? It won’t happen, we are told. But something has happened that is very bad. When we need roaring bishops, like lions, all we get are meows from kittens.

Humility, humility, humility, humility.

It begrudges life. And, to extrapolate to a theological level, I add an observation once shared with me by the Rev. Paul Scalia. He pointed out that angels (including fallen angels) cannot procreate. There are no “baby angels.” The angelic choirs are what and as many as God created them. And it is perhaps not accidental that Satan’s first target for sin was the woman, not because she is supposedly weak or gullible, but because she could give more life, something the Evil One hates. Is it not telling that, when Christ defines him, he speaks of the devil as “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44)?

Religious believers may or may not agree with Trump about immigration or trade. And they may have diverse views about how to respond to our society’s confusions about what it means to be a man or a woman. But they should welcome the general erosion of the open society consensus and its ready accusations of fascism and authoritarianism. In that regard, whatever one thinks of the man or his platform, Trump’s electoral success is good news for those of us who think that the highest, noblest, and most liberating act is to surrender ourselves, heart, mind, and soul, to God.

For all the indifference that we think we face, and which we use for our excuse, the heroic prospect of evangelism remains. For as the Saints have already attested, the road goes ever on into peril and hazard.

Significant pockets of the clergy and laity, however, have remained faithful to the Church. The intellectual and spiritual legacies of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI influenced a new generation of young priests in America. A highly educated, doctrinally orthodox laity has also emerged. Catechetical materials, Catholic publishing, and Catholic websites testify to widespread orthodoxy among the lay intelligentsia and thoughtful Catholics.

When Catholics go fuzzy about sin, when we obfuscate about what leads us away from God rather than toward Him, when we try to subjectivize moral action out of some misguided notion of mercy, we’re not making things easier for ourselves or for anyone else. We’re only succeeding in diminishing the urgency and freshness of the Good News itself. As the Synod continues to consider how to better proclaim the Gospel, it would do well to remember: If sin is not a big deal, then neither is our being saved from it. And if salvation is not a big deal, what’s so good about the Gospel?

Other Catholics are founding publishing houses (such as Sophia Institute Press, Ignatius Press, Os Justi Press, Emmaus Press, Cluny Press, and Angelico Press, to name a few), online magazines (like Crisis, LifeSiteNews and OnePeterFive), creating routine podcasts and daily radio shows (like The Catholic Current with the imitable Fr. Robert McTeigue)—all of whom can be likened to the pre-Soviet era Radio Free Europe. With skill and ingenuity, they are broadcasting the message of Doctrinal Catholicism over the heads of the cadaverous ecclesial bureaucracy that sits like a massive beached whale on the Mystical Body of Christ. These dynamic New Catholics have become the lean and diminutive David, slinging the tiny polished stones of the Victorious Christ against the massive and dollar-bloated Goliath of the conventional leadership.