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TRANSCRIPT

When companies are doing internal reviews and want to know what their customers think of them, their products and their services, it's typical that they conduct market surveys.

The surveys come in all kinds, shapes and forms — from focus groups to incentive emails to online surveys, and so forth.

Recently, a company sent out a survey and asked the following questions of its patrons:

As companies "dig down" into their customers' likes and dislikes (and then, broader opinions and thoughts), they often ask these types of questions. And then, whatever they are able to implement from these surveys, they do.

After all, you've got to keep the customer happy, because a happy customer is a repeat customer. Now, a little confession: The "company" that sent out the survey was a diocese asking Catholics those questions and a few others. 

This is precisely why Catholic, Inc. is failing. It sees itself in corporate terms, not spiritual. Nowhere on the survey was there even the slightest attempt to try and see if the "customers" understand what the Church is or, more exactly, who the Church is.

Every single question on that survey (and the possible choices) is reflective of a bishop and his staff who have zero comprehension of the Church as She is constituted in Herself. Consider that for more than half a century, the hierarchy has failed to teach that most salient point, the nature of the Church ("ecclesiology" is its proper name).

Then 50-plus years later, after having corrupted the minds of its customers by depriving them of the truth, a bishop shoots out a marketing survey asking them their thoughts about the Church — meaning, their feelings about it.

Do they like everyone's voice being valued? Do they like listening to one another? Do they like joint discernment and decision-making, dialoguing with society? What in hades do any of those terms even mean? They are completely stupid — just like the survey itself, the people who wrote it and the person who approved it.

This has nothing to do with eternal salvation. It's a customer survey designed to discover the likes and dislikes of the customer base and then make appropriate changes to the product according to the survey results.

In fact, given the inane questions — the wording, the choice of phrases, the vocabulary — the whole thing can be likened to Henry Ford's famous quip when marketing his Model T: "You can have it in any color you like, as long as it's black."

The survey is designed to elicit responses that have zero relationship to the truth. Who cares if someone doesn't feel everyone's voice is valued? Some voices should not be valued at all.

In fact, far from being valued, some voices should be expelled from the Church — Fr. James Martin; Cdls. Cupich, McElroy and Tobin; virtually the entire German Bishops' Conference; need we continue?

For all the bluster about "all voices being valued," go ask your local chancery if Church Militant's voice can be valued at the next diocesan men's conference.

This is all part of the smokescreen of remaking the Church — pretending to be listening to the people of God when all that's being heard is just an echo chamber of faithless prelates hearing back their theological insanity from the past half-century.

Since when did fellowship take priority over the sacraments? Since when did my voice gain greater importance than the Cross? This garbage is off the rails.

These surveys are being conducted in dioceses all over the world, with the results collated and then forwarded to Rome for inclusion in next year's agenda for the Synod on Synods — even the name is stupid.

Synods don't replace Church teaching, even if they have a billion questionnaires that prove nothing other than the gross failures of their bishops.

That will, however, be the one redeeming factor of the great big universal synod: It will produce living proof of just how much the hierarchy itself has rejected the Faith. It won't be the first time in Church history, and if mankind lives long enough, it likely will not be the last.

But we weren't alive during the Arian heresy. We also will not be alive during whatever future heresy swamps the bishops decades or centuries from now. We are alive in this one. That demands a response from us, here and now.

This is fool's gold. It's Protestant, building a religion around the emotional whims of the "people of God," collated from a series of worldwide surveys and decades of being malformed in the Faith. The Church as She is constituted in Herself is under divine protection. Individual members of the hierarchy, as well as the collective people of God the way they mean it, however, are not.

When Our Blessed Lord's visible body went into the tomb, His followers mourned, were near despair and had given up hope. Only His Mother believed — she hoped, and not just hoped but hoped supernaturally. 

She alone kept the candle of faith alive. You could say, in a certain sense, that for those three days the entire Church was subsumed into her.

Our Lord's visible presence here on earth once again appears to be going into the tomb. This will call for a deep faith, a supernatural faith — a "man of steel" approach to His promise that He will not leave us orphans.

In this month of the Holy Rosary, emulate the Mother of Christ, who did not despair but sat keeping vigil, waiting to see her Divine Son again on Easter morning.

Mary Magdalene was the first public witness to the Resurrection, but it is held by innumerable Fathers and Doctors of the Church, along with multitudes of saints, that the first to behold His resurrected, glorified body was His Blessed Mother — a uniting of Himself to her in a singular way. Yes, in exchange for her deep sorrow, but also as a reward for her abiding faith and hope, motivated by her love for Him.

What son, having witnessed the agony of his own mother at his sufferings and death, would not appear to her first, to bring her agony and sadness to an end?

G.K. Chesterton made the comment once that the Church has died many times in its millennia-long existence, only to be resurrected by God again and again. Hold on to that thought, that realization, that hope, as we descend into the tomb yet again.

We will not be there forever. As Psalm 16:10 says, "you will not leave my soul among the dead, nor suffer your beloved to know decay."