A Quiet Sunday Morning Brought Me to This
This past Sunday morning after mass and breakfast I was on the phone with one of my nephews. This is a part of my usual Sunday morning routine. A solid man, my nephew is also one of my many godchildren. Like myself, he discovered the Latin Mass a few years ago. Like myself, he dove headlong into the study of tradition, wanting to understand this beauty more and more. On Sunday mornings we trade stories about the sermons we heard and any other happenings in the Church at large.
Somehow or other, the topic of Fr. Paul Wickens came up. I think it was as a result of the fact that certain people we know who might be inclined to attend a Latin Mass refuse to attend my nephew’s parish in New Jersey because it was established by Wickens.
If you are not familiar with the saga, click here.
I remember as a boy and later as a young man growing up in the Garden State, in fact in Newark. My parents would discuss news items around the dinner table and in our general activities. They never shielded us kids from the horrors of the world – not to traumatize us but because they believed we should know that evil exists so that we could combat it. Also, both of them – but especially my dad – wanted his children to be able to hold intelligent conversations. Fr. Wickens was discussed occasionally, and always with a bit of sadness. They sympathized with him (they did not know him personally) but they also believed he was wrong to “break from the Church”. Hindsight shows me that he did no such thing and that he, like Archbishop LeFebvre are in fact heroes. Remember that I have a personal history with Ted McCarrick as he plays into this story significantly.
As I spoke with my nephew I was also on the webpage of a tribute to Fr Wickens. This lead me to several articles from sources like the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times. These articles detailed what exactly happened that caused Wickens to “go rogue”.
As I was eyeing the pages, I stopped a moment when I came across the section about how Wickens vehemently opposed the teaching of “sex ed” in Catholic schools.
“Odd,” I remarked to my nephew, “I remember around that time very well. I was in the fifth grade at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Newark. I think Archbishop Gerety, before he retired had implemented a sex ed program in the Catholic schools and McCarrick pushed it through full-steam. I recall, along with my classmates, being handed a book by my teacher on a Friday afternoon and being told to bring it home to show my parents. The understanding was that if they had any objections they could ‘opt me out’.”
I didn’t know what any of this was all about at the time except that the book was clearly about sex.
I was ten years-old.
Being filled with a native curiosity about how things work and, you know, being a ten year-old boy with a book about sex in my backpack, I rushed home, read the book, and then remembered I was supposed to give it to my parents. I did hand it off to them and they, to my surprise, cautiously allowed me to sit through the next three weeks learning how babies were made. If I recall correctly, the book was more clinical than anything else but to this day I do not remember a semblance of moral teaching. And I cannot explain why they did not opt me out except that there were moments in the past 50 years where we have all been caught off guard.
Can I back up to the part where I was 10?
In the time it took me to read that book (it was sonly 30-40 pages long and filled with illustrations), my innocence was destroyed. And people wonder why I homeschool my kids and will NEVER let them into the clutches of another until I am certain they have been formed properly enough to be solid in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic faith of our ancestors. Sorry if I went a bit off the rails there. That afternoon, something changed. I now had a whole lot of knowledge I did not need at that moment. I had a little bit of confusion too as a 30 page booklet couldn’t possibly fill in all the gaps and, as I mentioned, it left out any moral teaching. In fairness, my teacher never strayed from instructing the class that this beautiful gift was reserved by God for a man and woman in the sacrament of marriage. Thank the Lord for that. And of course, my parents always taught the same and more at home. But something died. My boyhood was over. I was 10.
I came across something quite germane to this discussion in the Catechism of the Council of Trent recently. I’ll quote it here. Remember, the modernists before, during, and after V2 never wanted you to read this particular catechism even though it’s still official Church teaching. Ask yourself how you can be in unity with anyone who denies these truths.
“In the explanation of this Commandment [the Sixth], however, the pastor has need of great caution and prudence, and should treat with great delicacy a subject which requires brevity rather than copiousness of exposition. For it is to be feared that if he explained in too great detail or at leangth the ways in which this Commandment is violated, he might unintentionally speak of subjects which, instead of extinguishing, usually serve rather to inflame corrupt passions. As, however, the precept contains many things which cannot be passed over in silence, the pastor should explain them in their proper order and place.”
p. 451, 1952 printing
And that’s the problem. The pastor (typically Church law refers to the local bishop as the pastor) was McCarrick, a sodomite sonofabitch. These men are so vile they desire not only to corrupt the youth but to kill their souls. This is classic narcissist behavior. “I’m miserable and you should be too!” They have purged all love from their hearts and they desire your death for their pleasure.
Why do I bring this up? As I continued to read about Wickens, after sharing that sex ed story with my nephew and explicitly telling him how I felt my innocence was robbed from me, I read a line in that Times article. Wickens, it seems, knew what this program would do and did what he was supposed to do. He manfully stood up and said, “Up yours!” In fact, he called a press conference in which he said that this program was not only unnecessary but would, wait for it, “rob children of their innocence.“
How did the Church respond? As you can guess, they got a judge to evict him from his rectory where he’d lived for 29 years. He raised some funds and built a chapel where he offered the TLM. McCarrick’s goons told the world that Wickens had been excommunicated although that appears not to have been the case. And in the early 2000’s, Wickens died, a man willing to suffer much to defend his people – especially the children not only in his care (he had been a teacher himself) but of the whole archdiocese.
And Here’s Where the Soldiers Come Marching In
Men, when are we going to wake up? When are we going to take the stands we have to take? I’m not talking to those who have been fighting this fight for years. No, to those men I raise a glass of my finest bourbon even though I’m a gin drinkier. But not just to those men but to the women, too, like Barnhardt and Mary Ann and Susan from Les Femmes or the Nellie Grays of the wold. If you’ve been arrested to save the babies, you’re my hero. If you’ve called a bishop a faggot without fear of “excommunication” because, well, he’s a faggot, God bless you!
But to the men… Our Blessed Mother told us that the final battle would be over marriage and the family. THE family, not just your own. My vingette is not just a stroll down a thorny memory lane or an expose of the rot. We all knew that was there already. The point of this is to steel our resolve as men. We need to be the Wickens’ of the world. Husbands, fathers, brothers… God gave us the physical strength and spiritual fortitude and the headship over our beautiful families to fight this fight. Your training ground is the altar of Calvary at mass, your home kneeler, and your garage gym. Your captain is St. Michael and your Queen is the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
It’s us. We have to fight for marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid to stand up when you know you must. Resist the heresy. Repudiate the heretic. Learn your faith inside and out. Call out the queers for their evil. Don’t ever let them take the Catholic Mass away from you. Pray. Pray. Pray. And love your wives and children.
Think of your 10 year-old son. Think of me.
The Blessed Mother has given her marching orders.
Onward, brothers. There’s work to be done.
Virgin Most Faithful, pray for us!
St. Joseph, Terror of Demons, pray for us!
St. Pius V, pray for us!
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 