Two months ago I had articles about the rise of the demonic and about the decline of the church when confronted by the demonic. The slide continues.

Today Christopher Manion has a story about the silence of American (and Mexican) Catholic bishops faced with rampant and spreading corruption. Their silence amounts to tacit approval of what are crimes against humanity. Much of this is done (or not done or said) in an attempt to curry political favor from the Empire and the financial procurement which accompanies. They have become modern Pharisees of the first century order.

As Europeans have recently learned to their profound regret, when an immigrant enters a country, he brings his culture with him. That goes for the victims of corruption as well as its perpetrators. When I translate as a volunteer for law enforcement here in the Shenandoah Valley, the uneasy deputy tells me, “get their hands out of their pockets!” I have to explain that they are not reaching for a gun – they’re reaching for bribe money because all of their lives they have had to pay off every man in uniform that they’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. When they send money to their family back home in Mexico, their family must pay off the police chief, the mayor, and the gang leader in order to survive. That is their culture, whether they are here or there.

Meanwhile, by the time they reach the border coming north, the victims and their victimizers are indistinguishable to the layman’s eye.

Nonetheless, our Catholic bishops want us to welcome them, harbor them, get paid by the federal government to house and to feed them and to give the criminals among them “sanctuary” from our lawful immigration authorities if necessary.

And God forbid that they tell them, “Thou shalt not steal!”

Instead, Catholic bishops and their Mexican counterparts tell the immigrants that they are victims of nativism, xenophobia, bigotry, and other sinful prejudices which, they allege, motivate Americans who oppose granting amnesty to illegal aliens.

While the Sheppards ignore the Gospel, the Traditions, the Canon Law, and even the secular law (what does that leave?), many of the sheep have abdicated. Manion notes that, over the past few decades, 30 million American Catholics have silently slipped away from the Church.

And no-one asks them to return. The decline isn’t even mentioned officially. Rather, the Ecclesiastics and their NGOs merely summon more tax dollars to continue works which will drive away remaining faithful.

Alarmingly, Church Leaders chose their political battles with apparent leftist political determination:

Catholic bishops have indeed been outspoken regarding the objective evil of abortion. However, while they blithely accuse most whites of racism, they are much more reserved when it comes to supporters of “abortion rights.”

In the current political climate, two prominent Catholics, Vice-President Joe Biden, and vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine, share the radical pro-abortion views of President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Yet the bishops are remarkably reluctant to offend Biden, Kaine, and Clinton by mentioning their names alongside their forceful condemnation of the murder of children in the womb.

Alas, the facts seem to go the other way. In May, Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, conferred on Mr. Biden what was once Notre Dame’s highest honor; and in August Mr. Kaine’s Catholic pastor in Richmond, Virginia, Rev. James Arsenault, called for a standing ovation – during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – to honor Kaine’s selection by Mrs. Clinton. (Father Arsenault did not respond to a request for comment).

The law of the Church, referred to as “Canon Law,” requires that such public scandal as participation in murder or abortion requires a public response on the part of the Church (viz. Canon 915). Apparently, that law is ignored by Catholic bishops as much as the law of the land, once known as the Constitution, is defiantly flouted by the folks in Washington.

So here’s the bottom line: supporting amnesty for illegal aliens is a prime mandate for Catholics: oppose it and your Bishop might well attack you publicly and personally. But support universal, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, and you need have no fear: as far as our bishops are concerned, you’re anonymous.

They seem to co-opted the government’s own approach to law: adhere to that which serves the agenda, ignore that which inconveniences. These are profound problems for the West, not merely in America alone.

Protestant denominations have it as bad as Catholic, if not worse. A mainline Canadian church parish is currently led by an avowed atheist minister. This is akin to having a Catholic Priest leading an atheist fellowship or a mental defect running a Mensa meeting. The ridiculousness has finally raised enough eyebrows even within the liberal ranks of the United Church; formal removal proceedings are to commence.

The headline asks: “Can an Atheist Lead a Protestant Church?” The answer is a resounding “no” and the fact that such a predicament arose (and is so questioned) testifies to the depth of the problem.

OTTAWA — The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a dynamic, activist minister with a loyal following at her Protestant congregation in suburban Toronto. She is also an outspoken atheist.

“We don’t talk about God,” Vosper said in an interview, describing services at her West Hill United Church, adding that it’s time the church gave up on “the idolatry of a theistic god.”

Vosper’s decision to reject God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and to turn her church into a haven for nonbelievers “looking for a community that will help them create meaningful lives without God” has become too much even for the liberal-minded United Church of Canada.

The United Church, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, has begun an extraordinary process that could end up stripping Vosper of her rights to continue as a minister.

If they don’t talk about God … in a church … then what, pray tell, do they talk about? Securing more tax money for abortions? For non-Western invasion? Do they talk about the terminating the last Christian resistance to the new global order?

And elsewhere. YouTube.

Satan himself couldn’t run a better “church”. This isn’t Protestant. It’s not Christian. It’s not even Churchian. It is an exercise in social suicide and defeatism. Worse (if more honest) than the cotton-candy theology of many modern failed congregations, this woman “Reverend” offers rat poison. Rather a far fall from the Sacramental Offerings of Christ.

Pat Buchanan once penned back-to-back chapters on the simultaneous collapse of the modern Protestant and Catholic Churches. Given the magnitude of the cataclysm it is difficult to discern whether this failing is a cause or a product of the decline of society. Evidence would seem to point to both.

Alas, such betrayals have happened before. We are eternally assured the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against the Church. Still, history makes very clear our own gates shall be tested again and again.

And, what are we to do in such times? Turn the other cheek? Turn a blind eye? Thrice deny?

Or, stand?