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LTACL: Culture of Lies—Catholic Edition? · The Catholic Current

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  Did you ever take a polygraph test called a lie detector
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  test? It's a funny thing. They always work really amazingly well
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  in movies. They don't work so very well in real life.
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  That's why polygraph evidence is almost never admissible
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  in a court in the United States. But what if you
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  didn't have to detect the lie because everybody knew that
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  the liar was lying? Now, there's a quote wrongly attributed
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  to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, says they were lying. They knew they were lying.
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  We knew they were lying. They knew that we knew, et cetera, et cetera.
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  There's something even better. I'm linking to his essay called Live Not
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  by Lies. Read it there. It is miserable to
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  live in a culture of lies. Anyone familiar with the Soviet Union could
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  tell you that, where lying was just a fact
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  of life. It was a universal, like the air you breathe
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  or the law of gravity. A miserable place to live,
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  a dystopian place to live. But what if,
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  what if, hear me out, what if there were a culture of
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  lies at work in the church?
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  What about that? Stay with me, I've got a story to tell. Hi, I'm Jesuit
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  Father Robert McTeague, your host every day of The Catholic Current, coming to you from
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  the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let's take a closer look.
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  Glad you're here. Live not by lies, says Solzhenitsyn, rightly so.
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  But what if you grew up in that culture of lies? It would not only
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  affect your soul and your relationships, it would even
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  reflect your language. I've been reading a Polish
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  author, in translation of course, named Krzysztof Soszynski,
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  and he said that the culture of lies that grew
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  up under Soviet occupation in Poland began to change
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  the language. There were words that described life under the
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  rule of the lie. There was the word called zwakminia,
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  and he says that's a state of total pervasive socially embedded
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  falsehood, a condition in which an entire
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  society is saturated with lies so thoroughly that
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  the truth becomes inaccessible. Well, that sounds like the stuff
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  of nightmares, but wait, there's more. There's also the word called abuda,
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  a deep performative hypocrisy, the gap between
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  what is proclaimed and what is actually practiced, the mask worn
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  so long it begins to feel like a face. So says
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  Polish author Krzysztof Sawinski. You say, well, fine,
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  Father, what does this have to do with life in
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  the church? Well, here's another link for you, and it has to
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  do with the various dioceses across the United States
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  closing down nearly everything.
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  And what's interesting is the language they use to
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  describe it. It's not called the Oops, We Screwed
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  Up and Now We're Facing the Consequences plan. It's not anything like that.
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  All these plans, as far as I've been able to tell— I haven't looked
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  at all of them, more about that in a minute— but they all have upbeat
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  names that are called things like Flourishing Families
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  and Into the Deep and Real Presence, Real Hope, Vision 2030,
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  Called to Be Church. Now, in the diocese that I've
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  looked into so far, Nobody says, how did
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  we get here where we're closing down so many parishes, where we have
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  such a dearth of vocations? And no one
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  is talking about what do we do to
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  make sure this bad situation never happens
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  again? So that sunshiny language seems to me— I
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  could be wrong, but it seems to me— is hiding some ugly realities
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  that nobody wants to talk about. I,
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  I'm an army of one. I'm just one guy. No one does my
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  research with me. No one does it for me. I don't have the
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  time to click on every hyperlink in this website that I
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  found that goes into depth for every diocese that's suffering
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  closures. So I want your help. Join me and
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  go through, you know, follow the links, go through the dioceses and say,
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  hey, did any of them any of them at all, not use
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  sunshiny euphemisms? Do any of them, any of them all,
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  say, we're here because,
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  said gently, mistakes were made? Does anyone say,
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  we learned our lesson, here's the proof, this is why you should
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  trust us going forward? And then leave it in the comments, uh,
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  if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening on podcast,
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  Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather
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  and let's see how truly these managers of
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  diocese, all the bureaucracy, etc., etc.,
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  including senior Catholic cadres, the people who should really know better club—
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  let's see how straight up they are,
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  because we don't want to live in a culture of lies.
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  I'm really grateful for your help. Meanwhile, think on these things today.
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  Take them to prayer. Talk about it with those you love. Go in peace,
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  and please do pray for me, for I am a
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  sinner. Thanks for watching today. I release
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  new videos on Mondays and Wednesdays. Check out the archives for
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  more videos. You can listen to my podcast at stationofthecross.com,
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  and you can find my written work at heraldofthegospel.org.
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  See you next time.