"Judas, sit down and shut your proto-Marxist piehole. THWAP!" John 12:7-8 - The Gospel of Judas Iscariot

Patrick Lawler (abridged and adapted by Graham Moorhouse)

Welcome to the next instalment of “Tales of CCRS” [CCRS stands for Catholic Catechism Rigidly Suppressed - I jest - it's supposed to stand for Catholic Certificate of Religious Studies - it is a course designed by our bishops to destroy Catholic education, and it has been very effective in so doing - Ed].

One of the main ‘teachers’ on the Westminster CCRS course is a certain Deacon; let’s call him Deacon ‘Nice’.  Now, Deacon ‘Nice’ is your archetype post-Conciliar Modernist, the living, breathing embodiment of absolutely everything you would associate with the egregious “Spirit of Vatican II”; he is your liberal’s liberal, your progressive’s progressive, your left-wing's left-winger, and like all his type, he is a man reeking with sanctimonious concern for “The Poor”, “The Disenfranchised” and “The Marginalised” (Yea, verily, twill be capitalised in thought, word and deed!).  Also typical of his genre, Deacon 'Nice' sermonizes endlessly about tolerance, whilst intolerance oozes out of every pore.

Deacon 'Nice'. Like the rest of his kind, has a profound devotion to the seven Golden Calves of post-Conciliar modernism: tolerance, dialogue, encounter, acceptance, inter-faith outreach, multiculturalism and that Golden Calf of Golden Calves … white liberal guilt.  As for genuine Catholic concerns - the salvation of souls; individual responsibility; faithful observance of the Magisterium; the Four Last Things; absolute truth; objective morality; evangelisation and conversion to the One True Faith – well not so much that you would notice.

Quite early on in the course (the second teaching day, in fact), Deacon ‘Nice’ - dismissively indicating to a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church - announced: “Being a Christian is not about following every single thing in there.”  Now, the instant he said it, I thought, “Oh, really!  And which parts of the Catechism should we feel free to ignore or disregard, pray tell?”  I am ashamed to say, I did not speak up.  In fact, I felt like such a lousy coward for the rest of that day and afterwards that I resolved not to remain silent the next time any of the course teachers made some smart aleck comment disparaging the Catholic faith. 

I did not have to wait long for Deacon ‘Nice’ was always especially accommodating in his modernist, progressive, Spirit-of-Vatican II worshipping, apostasy-friendly outlook.  One such (totally in character) gem was when he announced: “Taking care of the poor is the heart of Christianity.”  Please note, there is no “at” in that sentence; he did not say, “Taking care of the poor is at the heart of Christianity.”  Indeed, I was most insistent at the time that I did not misquote him, neither adding nor subtracting from what he had said.  “Taking care of the poor is the heart of Christianity” is exactly what he said.  I raised my hand and the following exchange ensued:

HIM: “Yes?”
ME:  “Did you just say, “Taking care of the poor is the heart of Christianity?”
HIM: “Yes”
ME:  “Well, it isn’t”
HIM: “What do you mean?”
ME:  “I mean taking care of the poor isn’t the heart of Christianity.”
HIM: “Yes it is!”
ME:  “No, it isn’t. Taking care of those experiencing poverty and hardship is certainly important and can justifiably be described as one’s Christian duty but it isn’t THEheart of Christianity.
HIM: “Of course it is”
ME:  “No, it really isn’t! The heart of Christianity is the reality of Our Blessed Lord’s sacrifice on the cross and the salvific grace made available to those who faithfully receive the blessed sacraments of the One, True, Holy and Apostolic Roman Catholic Church.  It’s about saving the souls of individual sinners like me and trying to make sure we spend eternity with God in Heaven rather than with Satan in Hell!  Our Lord didn’t come to Earth to live as one of us and die an agonising death on the cross just so we could open a soup kitchen!”

There was a bit more liberal spluttering from Deacon ‘Nice’ but, before too long, he did (with exceptionally bad grace) have to admit that, “Well, if you’re going to be rigidly theologically accurate….” then alright, that sacrifice-on-the-cross-and-saving-souls-stuff is, I suppose, sort of, the heart of Christianity.

This is a clear example of what I call “The Gospel of Judas Iscariot”; I didn’t come up with that title myself and it certainly doesn't refer to the dodgy Gnostic text of the same name that had a certain amount of notoriety a few years ago [Why the media at the time insisted on calling it the Gospel of Judas was always something of a mystery, as it wasn't written by Judas and it wasn't a Gospel - Ed].

Judas was a liar, a thief and a traitor and he was so, primarily, because he did not believe in the Truth, Our Blessed Lord.  His ‘concern’ was purely for the things of this world; fame, worldly regard, wealth and comfort and we see his ‘concerns’ writ large in the post-Conciliar Church on all sides. The “social justice” crowd are following in his footsteps and taking many well-meaning but woefully un-catechised souls with them to their final destination and judgement, while, along the way, propagating an emasculated, feminised, communistic and de-sacralised fake theology, elevating “The Poor” to saintly victimhood simply by ‘virtue’ of being poor (whether in relative or absolute terms).

I simply cannot say it in a clearer and more engaging way than the formidable Ann Barnhardt in her excellent essay, “Jesus Christ: Economist”, enjoy!