The fall general assembly of the USCCB lumbered into session last week at the Marriott Waterfront in Baltimore, as they do each November. The ponderous livestream of bishops, all doing their best to be flavorless, was, to say the least, somnolent. There were approximately two minutes of interest on day two, when Bishop Strickland stood up to make an intervention. He was widely ignored, after which the porridge of officialdom moved on like a slow-moving river around a midstream boulder. It felt like they all found something of interest on the ceiling.

It is finally becoming apparent, even to the most hopeful, that no amount of begging, pleading, or shaming will cause the bishops to care about the laity and those things that are most important to us. If they’re confused as to what those things are, a good start would be to ask priests what they hear most in Confession. I guarantee it’s not offenses against climate change or synodality.

Our children are lost to virtue at an early age and misled by the hyper-sexualized agenda in their schools. The culture of death and depravity takes more trouble over them than the Church does. Where is the stout teaching of the theology of the body in schools and parishes? Where are the Christian heroes able to credibly witness to purity?

They’re not to be found in the Baltimore Marriott, and wouldn’t you think bishops might be a little ashamed of that?

Young adults are turning away from marriage and family. Contraception, abortion, sterile lifestyles, pornography, and misplaced priorities are seductively proposed to them, guaranteeing that they will never have the joy intended by God through the family. Might that be of some interest to the bishops?

So many people who left the Mass under the Reign of Fear in 2020 never returned. We still have a crisis of catechesis, with adults in the pews who have no idea what their Catholicism teaches. The obsessive persecution of the Traditional Latin Mass has driven some of our most committed and hard-working parishioners out of diocesan parishes. Tens of thousands of our African brothers have been kidnapped, tortured, and executed for the Faith. 

Could the bishops be troubled to address any of that?

No, they spend themselves on immigration, climate change, and synodality. They waste their time and our money to address things that have no bearing on the lives of the laity or the health of our beloved Church. 

When the bishops coyly use the term “immigrant” without specifying legal or illegal, they’re not talking about legal; otherwise, why obfuscate? According to a Harvard-Harris poll from June of this year, 80 percent of all Americans are in favor of the deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes. As of this fall, about 1.6 million have self-deported, provided with free airfare, a cash bonus, and a chance to apply for legal reentry. Around another half million have been forcibly deported, many of whom are the worst of violent criminals and gang members. Some do not have U.S. criminal records (and the media and bishops will focus on that), but they have long records in their home countries. 

No multiplication of pious words from the bishops can change the civil laws. The bishops pulling on the illegal side of the tug-of-war rope sends the message to young people that they need not follow laws they don’t like. That is no preparation for adulthood, but the bishops don’t have to try to raise children to be responsible citizens. 

In a March Gallup poll of 16 key issues of concern to Americans, climate change didn’t make the worry list. Even Bill Gates has distanced himself from the climate melodrama. But the bishops will keep milking it until the udder shrivels up. Laudato Si’, you see. 

And synodality? Please. You couldn’t find two people in the whole world who agree on what it is.

I don’t know anyone who thinks the bishops, as a body, are doing a great job. Or even a job. There are a few good ones who could actually be a force for Christ in their dioceses if they didn’t have to flap around like synchronized fan dancers for the bishops’ conference and the pope. Heaven forbid any apostle of Christ the King fail to blindly follow orders. 

So the Coffee Circle took a whole lot of money to rent space at the Waterfront Marriott—with, no doubt, a strong security force because the princes are afraid of their subjects—and wasted three days performing on subjects that are of little to no importance to those of us who (used to) throw our tithes into the basket.

Do I sound disrespectful? I’ll reserve my genuine respect for the one man who spoke up for a few of the things that are really troubling the faithful. The conversion of the ancient Church of Jesus Christ to the homosexual gospel concerns us. The deceptive portrayal of the illegal immigration crisis concerns us. The fearful and mechanical obedience of bishops to the episcopal tribe—rather than to Jesus and His Mystical Body—concerns us. 

I refer you to Bishop Strickland’s intervention on day two, which was ignored by the Coffee Circle but not by the faithful. Thank you, Bishop Strickland, for knowing and caring about the real world in which we, the laity, live and work and try to raise our families for God. Note the disregard of the other bishops when Strickland exhorts them to take the homosexual revision of the Faith seriously. 

Then see the postscript that Bishop Strickland posted Friday morning, beginning “Dear Faithful Catholics.” These are some of the most powerful words our lone shepherd has ever spoken:

… and then he gets fiery. Read the whole post here.

The discontent of the laity with their bishops continues, but the self-satisfied prelates either don’t notice or don’t care. This cannot continue indefinitely. If the bishops are determined to lead the Church down a path the laity can’t, in good conscience, follow, what will be the outcome? I pray the Lord defends His sheep.

Jesus, we trust in You. Maranatha!