A good priest was telling me yesterday, with that mix of mischief and lucidity that only lived faith provides, when I thanked him for his clarity in defending the faith: «I’d rather be struck down as a man than as a faggot.» And one perfectly understands what he means. In a Church where lukewarmness, irreverence, or public sin no longer scandalize, what bothers the most—what truly irritates the bishops, their eminences, etc.—is the virile priest, clear, joyful, who celebrates facing God and doesn’t apologize for being so.
They no longer tremble before liturgical abuses or empty temples. They don’t care if no one believes, if homilies sound like coaching, and if young people flee confirmation like the chickenpox. But if a priest dresses in a cassock, prays the rosary, or quotes Saint Thomas… that does provoke reactions. There all the alarms go off: “Rigid! Integrist! Fundamentalist!”. «Don’t you dare come to my diocese to give a talk»
They fear solidity, security, faith that doesn’t ask permission. Because there are more and more priests like that, more young people who don’t want to be social animators or managers of soulless parishes, but men of God.
And it’s that, although they don’t say it out loud, what hurts the most to many in the episcopal offices is that these priests don’t fear them. They don’t seek their approval or their condescending smile. They don’t live pending applause or ecclesiastical promotion. They are free men. Praying men. And where there is freedom and prayer, mediocrity trembles.
Another very dear priest was telling me that in the Church there are three rules that never fail:
- «He who seems it, is it.»
- «What seems strange, is strange.»
- «If you’re mediocre and know how to grovel, you get anywhere.»
Of course, these priests don’t seem it, they’re not strange, and they’re not mediocre nor do they grovel. Intolerable.
Let them get irritated as much as they want. The more it bothers them to see cassocks, the more cassocks flourish. The more they despise reverence, the more young people learn to kneel. The more they insult “rigidity,” the firmer the faith of those who truly believe becomes.
The Holy Spirit is having fun, benevolently, raising up priests who don’t let themselves be tamed by progressivism or seduced by applause. And while some prelates keep looking for “new forms” for the Church, these priests are reviving it.
So yes: blessed are the rigid ones, the men, those who prefer to be struck down for believing and not for capitulating. Because, in the end, when the storm subsides, they will remain—standing, joyful, praying—holding up what others abandoned. And that, bishops, hurts you more than any criticism: that the true renewal comes from those who didn’t surrender.