Things are far more complex than simply “People selling religion”. The real narrative here is about young people with a genuine desire to serve and bear witness to Christ getting fed into politico-capitalist machine of exploitation who only slowly come to grips with the fact that this machine has zero interest in Jesus. Those people, still dedicated to Christ and to living authentically as disciples of Christ, are now coming to grips with that machine and working to destroy it from within. The prophetic witness of the Body of Christ has a loooooong history of destroying and transforming things that have tried to eat and digest it. Proud of these witnesses against the Machine.
As a convert, ironically, from that Evangelicalism to the Catholic Church who was groomed in a very similar conservative Catholic theopolitical machine that is also less interested in the Faith than in turning the Church into a wholly owned subsidiary of christofascist corporate power, I feel compelled to add that no form of Christianity in the US is immune from the menace these people are confronting.
Indeed, I would be interested in seeing some sort of comparable look at the ways in which Catholics around the world are likewise coming to grips with the tares in the Church laboring to thwart reform and make the Church the servant of worldly power. It’s a never-ending struggle, of course. But I think it’s a story that needs to be explored. It is Reactionaries, not the alleged CINO liberals who hate the Holy Father’s living guts and are laboring to overturn the Magisterium. I think this documentary, and the panic over Francis both sound like signs of hope that the Enemy is not having everything all his own way. We are living in a great period of what Pope Gregory VII, a thousand years ago called “reformatio” being conducted by the Holy Spirit. C.S. Lewis describes the chaotic, “out of control” feel of that quite well:
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I intend,
and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Is 55:8–11)
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