DON’T LIE, DON’T PRETEND, AND DON’T CAVE (Part 3 of 3)

 

…CONTINUED FROM PART 2…

In October of 2021, at the age of 60, beginning the 41^st year of my career as a Seattle Archdiocesan teacher/coach/principal with 34 of those years as principal of St. Louise School, I found myself with a decision to make:

A) Pick the harder right – which would result in losing my job, salary, and health benefits, along with ending any future Catholic career in Western Washington since I would be permanently banned from any other job in the Archdiocese;

B) Pick the easier wrong – which would allow me to continue working in a job that I was planning on being in for about seven more years (retiring as principal when I came to be 67).

In the two and half years since then, there has not been one day that has gone by where I have ever regretted choosing choice (A) and not caving, not pretending this particular inoculation was safe and effective, and not lying to my well-formed conscience regarding an abortion-connection with the vaccine.

I might not have had regrets, but I did have disappointment. I sorrowfully had to come to the realization on October 14, 2021 – the day I drove away from St. Louise for the final time and saw in my rearview mirror the school staff waving goodbye – that my values no longer aligned with the values of my Archbishop, my boss/pastor, and the Seattle Archdiocese Catholic school system, where I had devotedly ministered for four decades.

But it wasn’t just me who was improperly treated by Church leadership. Regrettably, Catholics nationwide were in various ways negatively impacted in the midst of the covid pandemic by their bishops and priests, even if it wasn’t as dramatic at losing their careers. At a minimum, Church clergy let us down by not vociferously directing us to follow the 2,000-year-old advice to turn to the Lord for hope but instead directing us to imprudently follow a president, governors, and a political immunologist. At a maximum, the clergy abandoned their job descriptions as shepherds tasked with looking out for the eternal souls of their sheep by overreacting due to their foremost concern of fearing the temporal, physical harm that a virus might do to their and their parishioners’ fleshly bodies.

Disappointingly, since the pandemic, our nation’s bishops have never taken responsibility during the 2020-2021 timeframe of the Covid-19 outbreak for Catholics being:

• deprived of the last sacraments as they died;
• denied Mass for months on end;
• refused family weddings and funerals because of arbitrary church-capacity rules;
• offered invalid sacraments, such as stories of bishops allowing medical personnel to do the physical anointing of a sick person, of bishops using q-tips when anointing with oil at confirmations, and of priests spraying holy water at baptisms via a squirt gun.

 

It has been over three years since March 2020 when the U.S. and the world started battling covid, and we still don’t hear any apologies or accountability coming from the cathedral and parish offices, let alone from Rome. Pope Francis privately held at least two undisclosed meetings in 2021 with the CEO of Pfizer regarding their covid vaccine, and for most of the past couple of years the Vatican was mandating for all their staff and visitors to be triple vaccinated. Unfortunately, both during the height of the pandemic and even the following year or two, too many Church leaders – including the Supreme Pontiff – shied away from God, trusting more in a Doctor Fauci than in a Lord Almighty.  

With no respect shown to devout Catholics who did not want to go against their consciences in religious and personal matters, the Church leaders’ decisions on both locking their churches and requiring the vaccine proved not to be a failure of scientific judgment, but a failure of their faith. Perhaps we need our clergy to remember the words of the remarkable Catholic thinker and author, St. John Vianney:

“Oh, my children, how sad it is! Three-quarters of those who are Christians labor for nothing but to satisfy this body, which will soon be buried and corrupted, while they do not give a thought to their poor soul, which must be happy or miserable for all eternity.”

We expect our priests and bishops to be more concerned with the supernatural than the natural. They didn’t go to medical school to be the ones to take care of our physical bodies. They were ordained to look out for our spiritual souls.  

To those who would say I’m coming on too strongly by scolding priests and bishops for their anemic spiritual leadership during the pandemic, I’d remind them that priests and bishops are capable of error and evil. Jesus was betrayed by His Apostles, such as when Peter denied Him and Judas betrayed Him. The Catholic Church has had some unholy popes in her history, and every century is full of stories of priests and bishops being immoral in their actions or abysmal at their jobs. The Church has been and will continue to be betrayed by Her ministers. During these recent Covid years, many of the Church’s clergy were betrayers, as they genuflected to their government bureaucrats rather than to their God.

Churches were told to lock down while pot shops and hardware stores were allowed to remain open, and yet most priests and bishops didn’t appear the least skeptical of our government agencies’ hypocritical, illogical, and obviously politically-driven directives. A citizen couldn’t receive a Sacrament, but he could buy Scotch because drug and alcohol establishments were considered so-called essential businesses. We Catholics needed our shepherds to fight the government edict of closing churches by using the government’s own language of essential business to argue that nothing is more essential – both in the Bill of Rights and for our eternal souls – than to be able to worship.

I initially despised the clergy and administrators in the Seattle Archdiocese for their inappropriate and weak decisions which impacted my life so greatly; however, praying and going to confession helped me to eventually be able to will the good for those who wronged me. We are commanded by Christ to love others as He loves us, and with that, I knew it was wrong to hate those who used their authority to end my career. I accept that we must will the good of another regardless of what that other may bring our way “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Furthermore, I ultimately realized that instead of detesting these people, ironically and bizarrely, I might want to actually be grateful for their decisions of firing me and banning me from ever working again in the Seattle Archdiocese. Because of their harsh actions, I was stirred to leave an oppressive state and move to another part of the country where there were more welcoming and rational clergy, not to mention less authoritarian and radical state legislatures. Since I was permanently banned from ever being employed by the Seattle Archdiocese, and since the governor’s covid-jab-mandate would continue to make it difficult to find a neighboring Christian school who would hire an unvaccinated applicant, I had another decision to make after my initial decision of refusing the vaccine:

A) Do I continue to live in Washington – my birth state and residence for all 60 years of my life – even though it is one of the most oppressive states in the union, led by a tyrannical governor, and with an Archdiocese that has treated my like a leper and banned me?

B)   Do I move to another state? 

My wife and I started researching and making a list of what other states were considered more conservative in values as compared to Washington (most of them), had a higher percentage of active, Christ-followers than Washington (another low bar to surpass), and weren’t as oppressive as Washington in areas of mask and vaccine mandates (the majority of states made this list). We narrowed down our most desirable states to a few, and began interviewing real estate agents for both the selling of our house and the purchasing of an out-of-state house. We then flew cross-country to check out the real estate market in our first choice of a new state, as well as to tour the Catholic churches and schools there, trying to decide if moving made financial and personal sense.

We decided it did. I am so proud these days to say my wife and I are Tennesseans!

My caring and supportive wife agreed to this gigantic move in 2022 from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, and instead of seeing it as me causing us to uproot our lives, she graciously referred to the move as our fun adventure – even though the enormous project consisted of months of work to prepare our house for sale, to pack moving trucks and drive cross-country, to leave our Washington house we built together 30 years prior, to virtually negotiate the buying and building of a new house in the Volunteer State, and to give tearful goodbyes to family members who were remaining in the Evergreen State.

Similar to my wife’s and my refusal to inject an abortion-connected, untested drug into our bodies, our choice to move to the free state of Tennessee was another major decision we haven’t regretted. I credit my wife’s and my devoted Catholic faith for facilitating our “survival” during this disrupting and discouraging period in our lives. Every decision one makes should be in accordance with God’s will, and there will be times when one obviously knows that God wants you to choose a particular action. As a faithful Christian, you can put your options before God during silent prayer time with Him, and it should become clear what God’s will is. My wife and I felt more confident in our decision-making because we have a regular prayer life with God and are reliably obedient to Him.

“God permits divine providence solely for our good. We need to be firmly convinced of this so that we may not be scandalized by the trials of life. If certain situations seem to us incomprehensible, if we cannot see the reason why particular circumstances and creatures make us suffer, it is because we do not see the place they occupy in the plan of divine providence in which everything is ordered for our ultimate good. Yes, even suffering itself is ordered for our good, and God, who is infinite goodness, neither wills nor permits it except for this purpose. …God permits divine providence solely for our good. We need to be firmly convinced of this so that we may not be scandalized by the trials of life.” (“Divine Intimacy” by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.)

Getting back to this post’s title – don’t lie, don’t pretend, and don’t cave – those three principles all apply to how I lived my life during these past three years of the covid pandemic and accompanying panic-demic:

• I didn’t lie by agreeing that pot shops are essential but sacraments and public prayer can be withheld.

• I didn’t pretend that an untested chemical that was improperly labeled a ‘vaccine’ would stop transmission and infection because I respect my body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

• I didn’t pretend that the so-called vaccine had no connection with abortion because I detest the thought of cooperating with abortion at even the most minuscule level.

• I didn’t pretend masks work against a virus because they never have in the history of viruses and because I followed the fact that masks instead cause physical concerns for, academic loss for, and social negative outcomes for children.

• I didn’t cave to outside pressure that would have caused me to go against my well-established conscience even if by not caving it cost me my job.

As you continue reading future posts of mine, you will see that the foundation of these principles carries over to non-medical issues. Of course, I assume you became a reader of my blog not because you were looking to debate the varied responses to covid-19 but because you were searching for parenting or teaching advice and inspiration, along with honest, moral counsel, from an established, successful Catholic school educator. Rest assured, as you move forward to read forthcoming blogs in the weeks and months ahead, you will come to find out that 99% of the principles I live by and that I implore faithful parents and teachers to consider doing the same will not involve discussions on covid vaccines and mask mandates. Instead, examples of the numerous principles of this school principal that I will be sharing in the near future include these:

• I don’t lie by reciting the false Christian maxim: ‘We are not allowed to judge.’

• I don’t pretend a woman can be a man or that a man can have a baby.

• I don’t lie by calling it a “marriage” when a homosexual couple establishes a same-sex union.
• I don’t pretend that just because a school calls itself “Catholic” that it’s a good choice for Catholic families.

• I don’t cave in my choices and stances even if by living a counter-cultural life I will hurt others’ feeling, lose friends, or alienate family.

Saint Paul said:

“You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come.  For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good,  treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,  holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins, and swayed by all kinds of desires,who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.  … These people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth… Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.  But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived.  But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,  and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,  so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:1-17)

If you are truly a believer in, a follower of, and a lover of Christ, you should never be ashamed to proclaim loudly and proudly His truth and the associated moral truths. If your relative, neighbor, coworker, or social media audience doesn’t like hearing the truth, it doesn’t mean that the truth isn’t the truth. It just means that they prefer believing lies than believing the truth.

Parents, teach your children – through hearing your words and seeing your actions – to not lie, not pretend, and not cave. Explain to them that it will be difficult at times and they may suffer oppression, but when they later look back on their authentically Christian decisions, they won’t regret them.