I can see the entire congregation at Mass bowing and lightly pounding their chest in a show of sincere penitence to God.
“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
And as I’ve said numerous times, don’t elevate the person here as much as the message. People will invariably disappoint, but it will always be the message that will never die as truth. Ad hominem attacks are what have gotten us in this societal and spiritual predicament we are in in the first place. No one has been allowed to speak truth. Their character and integrity are always destroyed first.
Online personality and recent convert to Catholicism Candace Owens visited with Piers Morgan recently. Morgan was quick to deflect any blame he may have had for the tragic turn of events that have taken place all over the world due to the vaccine-that’s-not-really-a-vaccine. It is the way of so many human beings, it seems, to be unable to simply say, “I’m sorry. I messed up.”
I haven’t watched it in full (only the clip for this article), but here is the full debate.
Said Morgan, “Do not take my one clarification about the ability of a vaccine to prevent transmission should not be seen as some great mea culpa.”
Owens was having none of it.
“That’s a huge mea culpa, Piers. That’s a huge, huge mea culpa because that means you want people to go out and get an experimental vaccine in their arms and encourage them not to listen to independent voices that were saying, ‘Hold on.’ That’s a huge mea culpa. People died from the vaccine.”
Indeed, scores of us lost supposed friends over 2020-2022 issues like the jab, among many others. The certainty with which so many people trusted the very government-media apparatus they didn’t trust about everything else was staggering. And so many are so quick to continue doubling down on their decision.
It calls to mind a Scripture passage to which we can all relate:
Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather than the other: because every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted” (Lk 18:10-14, Douay-Rheims).
It is one reason we as Catholics, and Orthodox, for that matter, honor the Virgin Mary, who replicates in Luke 1 the above parable:
And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is his name. And his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him.
He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble” (Lk 1:46-52).
(The next three verses through 55 answer a lot concerning Christianity and the State of Israel, by the way, which is something else for which Ms Owens has been in the news….)
All of this, from these two Scripture passages to many more, is why Catholics strike our breasts during the Confiteor, which was significantly reduced in both language and frequency in the 1969 new order of the Mass (from three to one). It is one recognition I have of the Mass of the Ages–it is so much more sincerely threaded with the mea culpas necessary for us to view ourselves as we truly are–it makes us the publican more than the Pharisee.
It is why I struck my breast in the pilot episode of a little video series I’m starting called ‘Knight Time.’ I wanted to set an example. I want my students to understand this unequivocally crucial element in Scripture, because I believe it is an element glossed over entirely too gleefully in our churches and our society.
If we don’t practice introspection as to where we’ve been, we will never move forward without making the same mistakes, without committing the same sins.
Candace Owens knows this as a Catholic, a seemingly practicing one at the moment, which of course is the key. And her reminder of it to Piers Morgan is both timely and revolutionary in this Pharisaic American culture we live in.
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
Jeff LeJeune is the author of several books, writer for RVIVR, editor, master of English and avid historian, teacher and tutor, aspiring ghostwriter and podcaster, and creator of LeJeune Said. Visit his website at jefflejeune.com, where you can find a conglomerate of content.
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