Fr. Pacwa’s talk last night was very good. He made a couple of points that I took to heart because they apply to me. First, he compared the dissidents and heterodox Catholics to Bugs Bunny. They get Catholics riled up by saying and doing outlandish things and we respond like Elmer Fudd: we get angry and end up getting blown up. This is a good point, if you look around, orthodox Catholics can seem like we do nothing but complain. When I started this blog I wanted it to be a positive place since my experience in the Church and Catholic school was nothing but positive. Since then, I have become more negative and complain a lot. The other point he made was that if we do nothing but respond to the heterodox, then we allow them to set our agenda. We spend all our time saying what we don’t want but never get around to saying what we want. I think this is why we should do everything possible to support good, orthodox apostolates and put our energy into them, rather than spend time bashing or complaining about things in the Church.
Interestingly, Fr. Pacwa said that he may have a conference here on Long Island sometime next year that would be televised by EWTN. This would be great! This diocese is educated, wealthy, diverse, and large, if it were not for poor leadership in the past, we would be as vibrant in the Church as Rockford or Denver or maybe even Lincoln Nebraska. The fact that many dioceses that are much smaller than us have more ordinations is very telling.