Catholics are born for combat! We live in an age of imposed and ready-made thinking determined by public opinion and radical progressives. The modern world would have us abandon Catholic principles and submit to this yoke of godless and humanistic thinking in exchange for comfort and acceptance. It is our baptismal duty to reject the world’s invitation to compromise. We must be willing, in imitation of Christ, to stand as signs of contradiction against the anti-Christian forces in the world.
May 13, 2018.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Three centuries before Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a famous battle between the Romans and Samnites, a powerful army of 40,000 Roman soldiers was trapped in a mountain gorge and surrendered without a fight. The winners then humiliated the defeated by obliging them to march – backs bent, half naked, hands tied – under symbolic ox yokes, signifying that they had been reduced to the dignity of cattle. This episode has passed to posterity under the name of the Caudine Forks.
Centuries have passed, people have changed, manners have evolved, but the Caudine Forks remain. The yoke of the modern world is not that which weighs down the necks of oxen, but that of ready-made thinking. Any person who does not think according to the criteria defined by the shapers of public opinion must bow his head and acknowledge his fault. Agitated by the illusory fear of losing worldly approval, Catholics are often the first to accept this submissive attitude. This acceptance is tantamount to cowardice. It turns them into sheep, blindly following the movements of the flock wherever it may lead, bleating in unison their acquiescence to modern thinking. Even more, in order to justify themselves, they contend that this subjection is undergone in the name of charity. Let us not to be deceived: Catholics who disguise their identity as Catholics are only protecting their own interests.
It is dangerous to bow the head before the dictates of the world. The abandonment of principles comes at a high price. The enemy, who hides behind pleasing proposals, is not ready to make any concession. He knows that he must bring Catholics to surrender to his principles. Of course, if a Catholic accepts the dictates of today’s world, he will be conceded a few crumbs to save appearances. It won’t matter. The Catholic will have allowed himself to be muzzled and yoked.
Admittedly, it is tricky to react fiercely against the rising tide of lies and it is never easy to expose oneself to become the target of violent attacks. But the Catholic is bound to go into the world and fight against its false principles. If a Catholic does not engage in this fight, who else will do it? He is, by his baptismal vocation, a witness – the witness of Christ Who is the Truth and the Way and the Life. For a Catholic to keep his head high and free of the modern yoke is not a luxury; it is a baptismal requirement to which he must be faithful at all costs. He will be faithful by never counting on his own forces, by developing an interior life of prayer and renouncement, while seeking to do God’s will every day, living according to his faith.
In Christo Sacerdote et Maria.
Fr. Yves le Roux