An electrifying recent story on Gloria.tv galvanized me, seizing my attention: “Jesuit Smashes Idols In Africa”
“Fr Peter Ryan, SJ, visited his brother William, a Fidei Donum priest from Washington, in his mission parish in Togo, West Africa, he writes on CatholicWorldReport.com (18 April).
“During the visit, a delegation from a prominent family appeared who had decided to renounce their ancestral idol and asked Father William to destroy it.
“Several other neighbouring families joined them. The big day began with Mass, followed by a procession of hundreds from the church to the houses, where holy water and exorcising salt were used. Father Peter enthusiastically smashed the idols with a sledgehammer before burning their remains.
“The faithful sang "Yesu enye dzidula! (Jesus is the victor!). Finally, the main pagan shrine was demolished and a large cross was placed in the middle of the rubble.”
These faithful people responded to the Lord’s invitation to share in the freedom from sin and death He won for us through His death and Resurrection. And they responded with sincerity and simplicity. The smashing of the false idols which had enslaved them was the price of fully and consistently accepting and living out their new-found freedom in faith.
They could see with clarity what they needed to do. Their idols are of an obvious kind, naive and primitive, though evil all the same. Rejecting Christ, however, does not necessarily entail only a modern version of the golden calf.
“For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols;
but the Lord made the heavens.” Psalm 96, 4-5
For the gods of the peoples are idols. Demons, that is.
Would that we had had such a Jesuit in Rome to smash the Pachamamas that were insinuated into Catholic churches and the Vatican itself during the Amazon Synod. Africans understand well that these are idols, too. Perhaps we needed some Africans in Rome to take care of the job. At any rate an Austrian flew in, as we all learned, and tossed them in the Tiber.
Can you imagine the scandal when these new believers, with their zeal and new innocence, see the pope with others in the Vatican gardens bowing down and kneeling in the presence of an image of South American pagan fertility goddess? This scandal yet awaits reparation in Rome itself, public and intentional.
In reading about idolatry “over there” one may easily get a false sense that such never happens here. We have our idols, too, all the more insidious for perhaps being less obvious.
Evil idols spawned by the ubiquity of the Internet, among other enablers, abound today. They endanger not only faith and salvation but also purity, marriages, children’s safety, and more.
Take the “demonic rectangle,” for instance. You go everywhere with your Internet and texting portal that you sometimes use for actually talking to people. For some, it is used with discipline and without disruption to relationships, work, and worship. Some use their phones for prayer.
For others, however, particularly those in the grip of porn addiction, the mere sight of the phone can trigger receptors in the brain that immediately seek more impure images to feed the longing. It’s a vicious cycle of filth, rinse, and repeat that leaves its victims drained, discouraged, and even turned off to the spiritual answer found only in sacramental Confession, penance, and reparation.
There are some who are so deeply in the grip of porn that they should completely dispense with the smart phone for six months or more before they should trust themselves to use it responsibly and with purity once again.
No husband, flawed as he is in his imperfect humanity, will long remain married to his “real” wife while he is feeding himself daily with images of “perfect” women, who for that reason may not even be real. A real woman, any woman, each with flaws, can never compete with the perfect virtual images served up by the Internet. The man’s brain chemistry and sexual receptors, however, don’t know this. They respond according to command as instinctual faculties will. Freedom requires the dominion of the intellect and will, cooperating with grace, to reject the occasion of sin, already so familiar from the cycle of fall, confession, and repentance.
It is not only men who fall victim to porn addiction. Women also get caught up in its web. The person, in faith and reason, must use the Internet with caution at all times, realizing that nothing they see is guaranteed to be real and anything they encounter there may serve as a temptation. Custody of the eyes and emotions must be used at all times.
Speaking of emotions — there is also the matter of emotional chastity, which is connected to chastity in general. The danger of emotional dependency must be considered when it comes to social apps.
How do you feel when you send out something, whether text, photo, or comments via social messaging app, without receiving a response in return? Do you experience negative emotions? And when that happens do you respond by sending yet more messages in hope of an eventual reaction?
Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/smash-the-idols-in-your-life/
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