Imagine, John Lennon

John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York studio apartment by a deranged fan on this day  forty years ago – the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – at the rather tender age of forty, six hours after signing an autograph for his future murderer – an act of kindness, and one never knows.

Hard to think that former mop-haired Beatle would be an octogenarian, along with Paul, and perhaps still squabbling with his fellow bandmate, the only one left. I may have more to say on the Beatle and Beatles, but, for now, let us Imagine in our own key other lyrics to his saccharine ballad, which so fits our maudlin age. The songwriter imagined there was no heaven, and no God above, and, we may assume, no hell beneath, and no judgement in-between. We might imagine his surprise as he shuffled off this mortal that they were all quite real indeed.

As a thought experiment – a future eutopia, if you will – following upon my thoughts the other day about our new thought-control media, imagine if the CBC suddenly turned around, underwent a veritable evangelical metanoia, its eyes opened to recognizing the truth…

Imagine if they spoke of abortion as the lamentable tragedy that it be, advocating for ways of truly helping women in crisis pregnancies.

Imagine if they condemned physicians calling for the murder of the elderly and vulnerable, all in the name of a fake and sickly compassion.

Imagine if they compounded this condemnation for those doctors at Sick Kids Hospital – calling for the same treatment for children, harkening back to the Nazi psychiatrists whose own euthanasia program that paved the way their future ‘final solution’.

Imagine they spoke of drug use, sodomy, pornography and even masturbation as degrading habits that deform and derange one’s brain and psyche.

Imagine if they spoke of transgenderism as a psychiatric disorder, to be treated and healed with compassion, and that ‘sex change transitioning’, grievous hormonal and surgical mutilation as a bizarre and horrific experiment akin to Dr. Moreau’s – yes, even of children, even of children…

Imagine they portrayed the Church in a more positive light, as the pillar and bulwark of the truth, which still shines behind all the scandals, with segments on encyclicals and the splendour of truth.

Imagine if they allowed a fair and balanced discussion of the response to Covid.

Imagine they spoke of saints and pioneers, the missionaries and martyrs, of those who built this nation on the bedrock of faith and family, and of families who continue that tradition, raising children for future generations.

Imagine if they had a series – films, documentaries – on the glories of marriage and domestic life, of hearth and home, of productive work and the spiritual fecundity of consecrated and single life, instead of the myriads meandering through useless university studies in a solipsistic fog.

Imagine if they prayed the Angelus before the news.

It’s not that hard, if you try.

Of course, we do have some media sites that do speak of such things, but they are not going to see a cent – sorry, a nickel – of that Trudeaupian billion of our own money. Rather, they will continue, along with their analogous private schools, to hobble along, underfunded, underappreciated and even derided by so many, even within the Church.

Now, such sites are being shut out by Facebook and Google, who will conveniently filter what truths get by the State’s so-far passive censorship.

There is a bright side: Like love, the more difficult it is to find the truth, the more we may appreciate it. Christ never said getting to heaven would be easy, and the pearl of great price is often hidden in a field full of duplicitous weeds. Once we find it, not only should we rejoice, but like Plato’s philosopher – to say nothing of Christ’s Apostles – we should lead as many as we can to that same treasure, even if we die in the doing.