There's a frog in my bucket!

La grenouille est morte!

The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to tell this tale and, whilst it is very well known in the world of Catholic bloggers, I felt it was worth a re-run.

The Archbishop used this little  parable to illustrate, very graphically, how those in the modern Church have drifted off into oblivion, forgetting the vital facts about the Church's teachings on faith and morals because they have absorbed the deadly warmth of a secular, material society.

It is a simple story and, from memory, I will relate it as the great man once did:

"...you take a frog from its wild environment and you place it in a bucket of water where it swims around happily.


Then you slowly, very gradually, begin to heat the water.


Not by much, a degree or half a degree a day until quite some time later the day comes when you look in the bucket and the frog is dead.


It was not aware of any increase in temperature, so gradual was the increase.
And then, it died!"

So it is with our Faith. If we remove ourselves, for whatever reason, from the mainstream of the Church, and become distracted by earthly things, we don't notice the increase in temperature that occurs until, one day, it is too late for us and we are dead!"

This is the case with so many Catholics inasmuch that they attend Mass on a Sunday but totally disregard most teachings of the Church and all guidance of the Holy Father.

The temperature has risen and, to all intents and purposes, they are spiritually dead.

This might be a good starting point for the Bishops when they come to put into place Pope Benedict's call for an evangelisation programme in October this year.

Re-evangelisation should be Phase One!