By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio – articles – email ) | Feb 01, 2022
Universities pay historians to research, understand, and explain revolutions in order to help us comprehend our present circumstances. Most social upheavals—such as the 1789 French Revolution and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power—are top-down. Revolutionary regimes always count on the servile obedience of their subjects.
Occasionally a single episode illustrates an entire revolution. A male swimmer pretends to be a female and breaks records in swimming competitions. An anonymous young lady on the swim team musters the courage to complain. A man disguised as a female swimmer is shocking, but the complicity of university officials—and the fear that silences dissent—are far more disturbing. Is the cross-dressing male the poster boy for modern American revolutionaries? Or is the cowering anonymous young lady a more accurate image?
Many of us are also silent when confronted with similar absurdities in the workplace. Fear of vindictive superiors is always ancient, always new. Apprehension over the wrath of a powerful and unforgiving bureaucratic state is relatively new in America. So when corporate or government agencies sponsor gay-pride events, most employees play along. We convince ourselves that such cultural sideshows are no big deal. Why risk a job, a pay raise, or a promotion on such absurdities? We disguise our fear with the appearance of consent that comes with silence and compliance. Live and let live.
Bureaucratic elites desire more than compliance. They want our hearts, souls, and minds. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” training officers behave like KGB agents (or the dread “flying monkeys” in The Wizard of Oz). They monitor expressions of dissent on the job and social media and administer pedantic training modules to ensure “best practices.” Corporate executives are also captive to politically-correct interests because they fear the effects on their careers, company profits, and reputations. Even within the Church, top-down revolutionaries threaten the tenets of faith and morals. They, too, can usually rely on the slavish obedience of the silent, compliant majority by making transgressions unforgivable.
The top-down New American Revolution grew from economic success and tax revenue windfalls. The so-called War on Poverty can be seen as a revolutionary tactic, organized by elites, using taxpayer money to bribe voters. It worked. The massive power of our centralized government (fueled with tax revenues and deficit spending) and the multiplication of big corporations changed the face of America. As a result, most of us have become functionaries, cogs in a bureaucratic world of policies, procedures, and programs. The message: “Big Brother will protect us as long as we keep our mouths shut.”
Most Americans—certainly most bishops—are not only unaware of the dangers and injustice of reckless spending and the crushing national debt. They are also complicit. Indeed, the USCCB frequently calls for increased government spending, seldom (if ever) acknowledging that excessive spending expands government reach, fuels inflation, and robs future generations. The national debt rarely attracts the attention for the injustice that it is. Yet it remains the outward sign of the devastating bureaucratic top-down American economic and cultural restructuring.
Violence and destruction are the hallmarks of most revolutions. The inimical purposes of bureaucratic consolidations are much more subtle: Buy off and replace the Ten Commandments.
The Sixth and Ninth Commandments protecting marriage must be destroyed and redefined to promote contraception and the LGBTQ agenda. The Fifth Commandment needs redefinition to mandate subsidized abortion on demand and euthanasia for those who are a drag on the economy. The Seventh Commandment protecting private property (always, of course, in the service of the common good) is replaced by the centralization of economic and social power in the hands of a few, including theft from children not yet born.
Duties to the State replace the first three Commandments, perverting the notion of “social justice.” The slogan “follow the science” really means “never question your Government masters.” The presumed infallible teachings of government replace the Fourth Commandment.
Perhaps the most corrosive effect is the distortion of free obedience, the foundational response of faith. The bureaucratic state rewards obedience based on fear. Servile obedience—a counterfeit virtue—replaces the virtuous obedience we owe to lawful authorities. The result is confusion and endless arguments about the necessity of obedience, playing into the manipulative hands of bureaucratic elites.
The subversion—and replacement—of the Eighth Commandment underlies the entire plan. Lies advancing the revolutionary causes are enunciated with great certainty and seldom retracted. Many lies are codified into laws and become government and corporate human-resource regulations. (We no longer have the dignity of “personnel.” The bureaucracy treats us as depersonalized “human resources.”) Most of us have endured modern bureaucratic indoctrination modules designed to protect the bureaucracy from non-compliance.
The contrast with Christianity is coming into focus. In the Divine Economy, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity enters into the world and fulfills the revelations of the Old Testament. Jesus assures us, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Mt. 5:17) Fulfillment and revelation explain the changes of the Gospel. Grace perfects wounded human nature and builds upon it. Jesus does us no violence, and He always respects our freedom. We are, after all, His handiwork. Jesus is not a revolutionary.
The great divide has always been between Christ and the anti-Christ, heaven and hell. The “way of life” will always be God’s Commandments with individuals and traditional families reflecting God’s handiwork. Today, the “way of death” includes massive elitist politically-correct bureaucracies that confront and undermine the Divine law and Christian freedom.
The bureaucratic revolutionary elites have revealed the tyranny of their moral relativism. Of course—as in the Soviet Union—not everyone is in the position to dissent in public. But the vocational freedom of celibates—priests and single men—give them a greater responsibility to push back. (They may find that even those strange flying monkeys celebrated when the Wicked Witch of the West melted.) Where are the fathers?
We could use old-fashioned male outrage to protect our daughters on university swim teams. Do not comply.
Fr. Jerry Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington who has also served as a financial administrator in the Diocese of Lincoln. Trained in business and accounting, he also holds a Master of Divinity and a Master’s in moral theology. Father Pokorsky co-founded both CREDO and Adoremus, two organizations deeply engaged in authentic liturgical renewal. He writes regularly for a number of Catholic websites and magazines. See full bio.
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