Here’s What We’re Resisting

TRANSCRIPT

We'd like to say thank you to everyone who tuned into our live webinar last night on the Resistance. For those of you who were unable to view it live, it's available on tape delay on the Resistance drop-down on the Church Militant homepage.

To be certain about the goal of the Church Militant Resistance Movement, the Resistance is aimed at derailing the protestantization in the Church, which denies in practice or reality the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. This is the single hallmark feature of all 40,000 various denominations of Protestantism — an active denial of the Real Presence, the doctrine that Jesus Christ is really, truly and substantially present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity under the appearance of bread and wine.

The denial of the infallible dogma is the one single thing that Protestant denominations all have in common with one another. They fight amongst themselves on every other aspect of Christianity: the role of the Blessed Mother, grace, redemption, the Rapture, the sacraments, the Scriptures, authority, salvation, Christology, ecclesiology, anything you can name. But on this one single teaching, they are unanimous — they deny and reject that the Blessed Sacrament is actually Jesus Christ Himself.

This mindset has crept into the Church through seminaries and religious orders and errant bishops and dissident theologians, and it has gained widespread prominence and acceptance, if informally. It is not always directly denied by Catholic clergy per se, but it is treated in practice as though it is not true.

You can tell by the lack of reverence a priest or bishop refuses to give Our Lord in the tabernacle: how they handle the Sacred Host during and after the consecration, the willingness to permit sacrilege by not only the manner in which Holy Communion is distributed but also by the complete lack of attention or concern about who is receiving.

The high-stakes battle now playing out in the Church over Amoris Laetitia is, at its heart, a battle over the correct understanding of the Real Presence. That so many cardinals and bishops would publicly admit that those objectively in a state of mortal sin would be free to receive the sacred Body and Blood of Our Lord is all the proof one needs to see how far the heresy of Protestantism has reached into the life of the Church.

In every possible manner this heresy has insinuated itself into the daily life of the Church: liturgy, music, catechesis, Scripture studies, evangelization programs, priestly formation, seminary training. There is not an area of Catholic life that has remained unaffected by this evil. This is why Catholicism in the West is in a death spiral — because Catholic leaders either do not believe or do not strongly enough promote the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Faith — all things flow from it, and then back to it. There is such an integral web of teaching and belief and devotion in the Church that to do violence to one does violence to all. But to do violence in practice or denial or lack of promotion of the Blessed Sacrament immediately strikes at the very heart of the Church; in fact, it does damage to the Church Herself.

The Church is Christ's Mystical Body, and the Eucharist is His actual Body. They are wedded together in supernatural nuptials. This is why the Church is referenced as the Bride of Christ; through reception of Holy Communion, Groom and Bride, like man and wife, become one. For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

This is exactly what happens in the reception of Holy Communion. Our flesh is united with the Flesh of Our Blessed Lord, and we become one with Him, not just spiritually but in our actual flesh. But this is only possible through the ministry of the Church, so to refute or deny or fall silent about the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is to deny the legitimacy and mission of the Church.

This is why false ecumenism, that is, any effort which does not have as its aim the conversion of people to Catholicism, is ill-fated to begin with. The constant compromise and tolerance for the Protestant heresy that is so commonplace in the Church today is what's responsible for the current crisis, and mostly because of the downplaying or rejection of this most central of Church teachings by Catholic clergy.

When Our Lord told the Jews in Capernaum, as recounted in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, to eat His Body and drink His Blood, He meant exactly what He said. He said it that way. They understood it that way, and He meant it that way. And everyone was on the same page. That is precisely what they objected to. They said it was a hard saying and not worthy of belief. And they got up and walked away.

Our Blessed Lord did not try to accommodate their error and rejection of Him. He merely turned around to His Apostles and required an oath of loyalty, a statement of belief from them. The Jews that walked away on that fateful day in Capernaum 2,000 years ago were the forebears of the Protestant heresy. They had constructed their own version of Jesus in their minds, and they did not like the truth about Him. So when He laid it out, they left.

But not all of them. One quietly remained, preparing in his heart to wreak havoc against the true believers. Just like Judas then, there are too many in the Church today, bishops and clergy, too willing to reject the ultimate truth about Christ.

This is what we resist: the rejection of the teaching of Our Lord's Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist.