A Thoroughly Provoked Attack On The Remnant

One thing I’ve learned in all my years: if someone tells you they’re a “remnant” of something, they’re lying. Usually to themselves. Everyone who thinks they’re the last Orthodox Catholics or the last Bible Believing Protestants or the last People Who Know How To Make Black Forest Cake are being self-aggrandizing and dishonest. If a piece of fabric rises out of the leftovers bin at Jo-Ann Fabric and claims to be a remnant, expect to pay full price for it. It’s lying to you and to itself.

So, I’ve never really paid attention to the newspaper calling itself “The Remnant.” This is no reflection on The Remnant’s content; I just think the title is stupid. But I am often wrong about titles. I had no idea that my own blog had a title that was a play on Steel Magnolias until after people started mistakenly calling me “Steel Magnolia” every other day and other people started congratulating me on the pun. I’ve never seen Steel Magnolias. I’ve barely heard of it. I just wanted to give my blog a name that had both Catholicism and the Steel Valley in it, and “Valley Magnificat” sounded like a soap opera.

So, anyway, my impression of The Remnant is based entirely on its title and could be wrong.

But I’m pretty convinced I’m not wrong about The Remnant’s word salad of an end-of-the-year greeting, penned by Michael Matt. I found it on a friend’s page and decided to read it. You may read it yourself if you’d like; I’m going to dialogue with my favorite excerpts here.

It starts out harmlessly:

On this New Year’s Eve 2016, I’d like to wish The Remnant’s friends and allies all around the world a happy and holy 2017, filled with God grace and many blessings. I know I’m not alone in sensing that we may be in for a bumpy ride this next year. Things don’t look good, which, come to think of it, may be the biggest understatement of 2016.

I can relate, Dude. I can relate. Things look bleak. But I think you meant to say “God’s grace.” I hate it when that happens.

On the other hand, dire predictions of calamity and apocalyptic happenings seemed to ring in every New Year I can remember.  On New Year’s Eve 1972, for example—the so-called “Jacinta’s year”—we were told to brace for the dreaded Three Days of Darkness. Board up your windows, keep plenty of blessed candles handy, and, whatever you do, don’t look at the demon parade going on outside. I guess we’re still waiting for those Three Days of Darkness… unless, of course, they’re already here. It’s no simple task these days to tell the difference between demons on parade and public high-schoolers on holiday, God help them all.

You know, that paragraph began auspiciously. I am with you on the constant dire New Year’s prophecies, and I was excited when you were mocking that horrible Three Days of Darkness hysteria. I grew up on the Planet Charismatic. I was terrified of the Three Days of Darkness. I lived in fear of the End Times. We should all mock terrifying End Times Prophecy. It’s cathartic.

I don’t know what you have against public high-schoolers on holiday, though. They must be very strange looking in your neck of the woods. I can usually tell the difference between human youths and evil spirits.

Complete with plenty of Fatima implications, a possible Garabandal sidebar, and a world already blowing itself up, however, I suppose it’s possible we might just miss the 2017 chastisement altogether, what with all the death and destruction at which we have become so proficient.

That’s a heck of a run-on sentence. What’s a Garabandal sidebar? Do they have strawberry daiquiris?

Come to think of it, isn’t the chastisement more or less already here—the handiwork of that terrifying beast known as Modern Man, who told God to go to Hell.  We even told Him we’d rule ourselves—thank you very much! —neither needing nor tolerating any assist from Him. Maybe that is the chastisement—being left to our own devices, at war with our own God, hell-bent on the suicide of our own civilization. Could there be greater chastisement than life without God — and thus without either meaning or purpose?

Man is actually postmodern or post-post-modern at this point, depending on what historian you read. Also, what kind of men do you hang out with? Are these the same as the high-schoolers on holiday you claim look like the devil? You need new friends. You need a pen pal or something. Lots of people here in the post-post-modern era think God is fine right where He is. We love Him. We’re nice people, really. Relax.

The daughter of Beelzebub, for instance, lost her race for the White House after millions of rosaries were prayed for God’s intervention.

Who?

“Thought you’d never ask,” said God. And He worked the miracle — we’re not bracing for the inauguration of President Hillary Rodham Clinton. Thank you, God!

Hillary? A blasé and unelectrifying Methodist politician is the Daughter of Beelzebub?