In 2014, liberal Catholic outlet National Catholic Reporter ran a piece entitled ‘It's OK to despair and swear at God’, written by Michael Leach.
The headline was the usual NCR bait, but the article itself was well put together, with the author discussing his wife’s Alzheimer’s and the despair that came with it.
He finished the article by saying:
None of us gets out of this thing without trouble. Jesus cried to his Father from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But he forgave the thief and the soldiers with their spears and whips and his garments. He let it go. His last words: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. It is finished."
The prayer of surrender reconciles, brings rest: It stops us from shuffling guilt and fear and anger thoughts in our mind like a stacked deck of cards. Handing our worries over to the real God who doesn't play games brings closure, lets us get on with our life (till the next problem when we have to do it all over again), and now and then have a laugh at the folly of being human. There's no other way. Try it.
Sage advice.
It is certainly advice that many Catholics need today.
There is a certain online subset who, if they want to encourage people to leave the church, to mock the Holy Spirit and to abuse priests, then perhaps they should try to repair their own anger and flaws first before pointing the fingers at others, including at God Himself.
As Fr. Ripperger says in the video below:
They focus so much on what’s wrong…the negativity is going to be the cause of various things. We’ll get angry, bitter, sad in our relationship to others because we’re looking at what’s negative. They commit one little thing and that’s their whole thing…if we have charity we’ll see the good in them and stop being negative. Many Traditional families go around looking for the negative in people, trying to see what’s wrong.
It’s not up to you to ridicule him until he gets his act together. Your first responsibility is to pray and only to fraternally correct when it is helpful. The more that you try to control the external the more that you’re going to see it’s out of your control and you’ll end up hating it and lose your charity.
You have be more charitable to the people you’re closer to than others.
In Traditional families, it’s like the mafia…
People will be kinder to the people outside their family than in.
The person’s defects are there to purify you rather than to get rid of. They’re not there for you to get rid of.
Your job is to help the person spiritually, if you focus on it all the time you’re not going to gain any joy in relationship to them.
Fr. Ripperger also gives the example of St. Therese choosing to like the defects in her sisters rather than hating them for it. He continues:
Traditionalists will look at the world and the state of it… they’ll think to themselves ‘all men are liars’, but this is not true. Not all people are ‘evil’.
You have to give people the benefit of the doubt, don’t keep focusing on the negative because in the end you won’t be able to extend charity to them.
If you keep focusing on how bad everything is, it’s just going to take you down spiritually. You’re going to let it consume you, you’ll end up like a devil who thinks all day long about how everything is bad.
Some Traditionalists go to Mass and spend the entire time judging on what’s wrong with it.
If they just focused on God, things would be a lot easier. Demons want to rob you of your joy and piece and even your relationship with other people. God will straighten out the church, He’s the only one who can do it. Some Traditionalists are angry people harping on about how other people have sinned against them, you are becoming more like the demons than God by doing that.
We recommend watching the video, it is both helpful, insightful and productive. Above all, it is an antidote to the worst of sins, despair, which some are currently revelling in.