MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

A MESSAGE FOR MISSION SUNDAY

The story of the Church since its inception on the first Pentecost Sunday has been a story of expansion.  Our Lord gave the Apostles a mission, to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  All the Apostles were therefore, by definition, “missionaries,’ and their successors would continue their mission to the ends of the globe.  In the early days, the great churches were founded—Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and so on.  From there, bishops were created to convert the surrounding lands throughout the known world.  We are familiar with many of these men, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany, St. Patrick, and so on.

After the civilized world had been brought within the folds of Rome, the Church turned its attention farther afield.  Great explorers like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus opened up whole new worlds to east and west, and the work of Catholic missionaries was renewed and expanded. Finally, the darkest corners of the world, from Africa to the Amazon, were discovered, explored, civilized and converted, and the Church thrived in its mission of bringing new souls to God.

By the 1960s there didn’t seem to be any more undiscovered civilizations to be converted.  While missionary work continued in the colonized nations, its nature became more humanitarian in its nature, and the Church was rightly renowned for its schools and hospitals, and of course for the devoted work of the priests and nuns who ran them.  Was it Mission Accomplished, perhaps?  But there was a change in the air, and things would never be quite the same again.  

The Second Vatican Council made sure that the Church’s Mission would not only remain unfinished, but would actually be destroyed almost entirely.  Two thousand years of missionary work have been undone in the past seventy years, as Catholic schools closed, hospitals were secularized, and churches turned over to the new Mass and whatever happened to be the heresy of the day.  Vocations dried up, as God was presumably unwilling to call good men and women to a life wasted with such spiritual humbug, and the missions disintegrated into “liberation theology” and war against capitalism, colonialism, and, let’s face it, Catholicism.   

Papa Francis is a typical disciple of the Church’s new vision.  His hostility towards missionary activity is openly expressed, and this “Vicar of Christ” has actually prohibited the clergy from attempting to convert souls to the Church.  He has even refused to accept converts who wished to be baptized, telling them they should remain in their false religions.  And yet the whole Catholic world, with very few exceptions, swallows his open defiance of Christ’s instructions to go, teach, and baptize all nations.

Conscious of this incredible situation, we must realize the consequences.  We must pray for the missions. The world has reverted to its primal state, and we must seek new apostles to restore it.  Where are they?  Are you perhaps chosen to be one of them?