Never Again So Readily Surrender Your Freedoms and Faith

The writer and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, once said, “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” Regrettably, too many people these days don’t have a good grasp on historical events, let alone do they remember something that happened just a few years ago.

Take July 4, 1776, as an example of the former. Every July, Americans celebrate the holiday which is officially called “Independence Day” with fireworks and special events. But over time, society has changed the name of this holiday to the less meaningful moniker, “The Fourth of July.”

The fireworks shot off on this holiday are supposed to be commemorating the “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air” – symbols of our forefathers’ fight for our country’s freedom. But most recent generations of Americans do not get the connection. Special events on “The Fourth” used to include patriotic concerts and the president’s speech reminding us of America’s bold fight for independence and calling us to be a unified nation. Now in the 21st Century, special events on this holiday consist of barbecuing, sunbathing, and watching a famous hot dog eating championship.

Because so many adults nowadays no longer remember the patriotism of past Independence Days and because today’s younger generations are no longer taught the fundamental reason why July 4th became a holiday, the significance of the holiday will soon be lost forever. But I am not writing this post to talk about the importance of remembering what happened 250 years ago. I’m writing to talk about the importance or remembering what happened just six years ago.

The Covid Panic-demic

It was in March of 2020 that both the Church and State started making a lot of mistakes with their overreaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to remember what happened so that it shall never happen again.

Yes, the coronavirus pandemic caused out-of-the-ordinary cases of illness and death, but both the Church and State overreacted when they forced healthy adults and children to take oppressive, overbearing precautions. The elderly certainly needed to take precautions when it came to Covid-19, as it was a virus that was overwhelmingly affecting their age group. But Church and State went too far when they expected all ages and health-statuses to cower, cover, and cooperate with ridiculous edicts.

We can grant grace to any decisions that were mistakenly made in the initial weeks of the pandemic due to sudden fear and the dissemination of unreliable information. The March 2020 report from the Imperial College of London was the big propaganda piece that kicked off our country’s pandemic-pandemonium by predicting Covid-19 would cause 2.2 million deaths in the United States. The media pushed out this unreliable report, and without any opposing reports given any airtime by the media, let alone any credence by government officials, the majority believed the horrific prediction. From there, human nature caused most people to be willing to do whatever government and health officials told them.

Famous college football coach Paul Bear Bryant said, “When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”

Alarmingly, the majority of politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and Church leaders who made mistakes in overreacting to covid never admitted these past six years that they were wrong. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, they set up draconian lockdowns and stirred up hateful bigotry toward those who didn’t fall into line with mask and vaccine mandates. Now years later, with the grace of hindsight, they still have not admitted they were wrong. By not admitting mistakes, learning will not take place and things will just repeat themselves when Covid-25 or some other “unprecedented event” befalls our country and our world. (The recent news stories about hantavirus are a perfect example.)

Freedoms Gained and Freedoms Lost

We must never forget the freedoms we gained in 1776 with the American Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. Similarly, we must never forget the freedoms we lost in 2020 and the two years following with the relinquishment and denial of our civil rights, bodily rights, and fundamental right to worship.

Don’t ever forget that:

• churches were locked shut;
• sacraments were canceled;
• reception of the Eucharist was stopped;
• visits to loved ones dying in hospitals weren’t allowed;
• funerals were either canceled or at best consolations weren’t allowed; (this video is very disturbing on how mourners – who you know were hugging each other just prior to and right after entering the funeral home – were treated during the funeral ceremony);
• weddings were postponed;
• schools were shut down;
• masks were forced on children and toddlers, let alone adults;
• people were arrested for playing outdoors at a park, paddling alone in the ocean, and having family gatherings at home;
• people who refused an experimental inoculation and thus couldn’t show “their papers” (remembrances of Nazi Germany) were kept out of restaurants, refused entrance to sporting events, shunned by much of society including friends and family, and even fired from their jobs.

The masking, 6-foot distancing, and vaccine mandates not only did not stop covid but actually caused worse problems. Masking and distancing caused educational loss and social/emotional harm. The vaccine caused injuries and deaths. There were reports five and six years ago that countered the mainstream propaganda on Covid-19 precautions and remedies. But these early reports were buried and “canceled,” and not allowed to see the light of day by the corporate media, the AMA, the CDC, the WHO, and state and national government officials.

Catholic Hierarchy Failings

It was not only the media and government officials who buried opposing information, but even Catholic Bishops and the Pope himself joined in with the censoring of truth and the pushing of faulty mandates. They unbelievably even went along with government officials who insisted churches were not considered so-called “non-essential businesses,” and thus, needed to be locked closed.

As for the so-called vaccine that the media and government were promoting, Pope Francis at the time implied it was sinful and selfish to deny taking the covid jab. He called it a “moral obligation” and said, “Ethically, everyone has to get the vaccine.” He required employees and visitors to the Vatican be inoculated, and he even removed a Bishop who opposed vaccine mandates.

If you know my personal story, my Seattle Archbishop, pastor, and Catholic schools’ superintendent formed a trifecta to force me out of my 40-year job as a Catholic school educator. The reason? I wasn’t willing to get injected with that abortion-connected and untested “vaccine.”

Even beyond the vaccine mandates, too many bishops locked up churches, too many priests refused to give the Sacraments, and too many Catholic school administrators refused to let students return to school in a timely manner. Even when the Catholic schools finally removed the padlocks on school doors, most still forced students and teachers to wear “face diapers” without any proof this stopped transmission but with much proof this hindered their social and academic development.

We must never forget that in many states, churches were told to lock down while pot shops and liquor stores were allowed to remain open, and yet the priests and bishops in those states didn’t complain and didn’t appear the least skeptical of government agencies’ hypocritical, illogical, and obviously politically-driven directives.

We must never forget that 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.  

We must never forget that a large number of clergy genuflected to their government bureaucrats rather than to their God.

Did any of these Church leaders – from Pope Francis to Archbishop X to Father Y to Catholic School Superintendent Z – learn from their mistakes? Have any of them admitted they were wrong to force an abortion-connected vaccine on Archdiocesan employees, to require masking kids, to close church doors and halt liturgies and sacraments? Have Catholic Church administrators and pastors conceded that, once they did open their churches, that is was both an overreaction and secularizing of sacred spaces to wrap yellow caution tape around church pews like they were crime scenes and to turn their sacred spaces into warehouse-looking-buildings by sticking arrows on the ground showing where to walk at the magical 6-foot distance when receiving Communion?

The answer to all these questions is “No!”

Our Clergy Let Us Down Just Like Our Government Did

I have never expected most government officials or the mainstream media to be humble, reliable, and truth-tellers. But I do expect our Catholic clergy to be. Starting six years ago, our freedoms were lost and right to practice our faith kicked to the curb due to overreactions and poor decisions to the coronavirus. Because of this, much of the country’s trust in the so-called medical experts and in government agencies was destroyed.

But worse for authentic Catholics, much of our confidence in our Church leaders was likewise shattered. Unsurprisingly, many Catholics who were kicked out of church in 2020 during the stopping of public Masses never returned to attending Mass after the church doors were reopened.

Any way you look at it, Church clergy let us down with their initial reactions to covid in 2020 and then continued illogical decisions in the two years following. They 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 turn our attention to a president, a governor, and an immunologist. They let us down by making their foremost concern the fear of the temporal, physical harm that a virus might do to their and their parishioners’ fleshly bodies while disregarding concern for their flocks’ eternal souls. It is concern for souls that is their fundamental job description.

It appears that most of our clergy have forgotten the words of the great 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 popes, bishops, and priests 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 went to seminary and were ordained to look out for our spiritual souls. When priests are ordained, they promise to “preach the Gospel and teach the Catholic faith” and to “celebrate faithfully and reverently the mysteries of Christ, especially the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation, for the glory of God and the sanctification of the Christian people.” At no time when they receive the sacrament of Holy Orders do priests promise to look after the bodily needs of the people or to embrace the edicts of their county’s department of health.

Jesus was an innocent man sentenced to death, and yet He was still able to say regarding his tormentors, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” So, I am willing to do likewise and assume the mistakes the clergy made in 2020-22 to lock up their churches and Catholic schools, to stop administering the sacraments, and to fire Catholic employees for not taking the covid “vaccine” were done out of ignorance.

However, when the majority of priests and other Church leaders still to this day will not admit they made mistakes in how they responded to the pandemic, then what am I to think? Can we not at least expect them to confess they have learned from their mistakes so in the future they will stay within their areas of authority to promote and promulgate the Faith?

Don’t Join the Sheeple

In a similar fashion, would all those lay persons, who six years ago uncritically acquiesced to whatever authorities said regarding covid-connected directives and commands, do me a favor? If – or I should say, when – the next unprecedented crisis occurs in our country (e.g. hantavirus, bird flu, monkeypox), would you vow here and now to commit to three things?

1. That you will not blindly follow bureaucratic diktats and follow silly commands like sheep (such as the masking rules when at a restaurant);
2. That you will fight for your and your neighbors’ civil liberties;
3. That you will demand your priest and bishop tend to your spiritual soul more than fearing bodily ills.

It took 40 years after World War II before the American government apologized for the mistake it made in incarcerating 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during the war. Let’s hope that we don’t have to wait until 2060 for apologies to the Covid-19 overreactions. I pray that today’s government and religious leaders have learned that “when you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”

The shameful aberrations allowed by both the leaders of Church and State which forfeited our civil liberties and squashed our religious freedoms as recently as just a few years ago must never happen again.