Cancellation Policy

We witness many things that are upside down and backwards being treated like they are right-side-up and forwards, and we see a tool used in this process that is known as the “cancel culture.”

Essentially, what the cancel culture does is use whatever bad it can drudge up from a person’s past in order to discredit and marginalize them, defining their entire life around that moment.

Especially in this age of the Internet and instant communication, it can be easy to isolate a questionable comment or incident someone made decades ago and then resurrect it out of context (or, for the less scrupulous, to simply make it up) in the attempt to assassinate a person’s character and cancel the person’s credibility. We watched this take place during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing; he survived the relentless onslaught, but damage was done to him and his family.

As we find ourselves resisting the “woke” state forming around us, we see that none of us are safe from this. We have all made plenty of mistakes in our lives; there are things in our pasts that we are not particularly proud of and wish to forget – and hope are never resurrected – and we can have genuine regret and compunction for them.

However, this idea of a cancel culture is actually nothing new; what we are facing nowadays is simply a hijacked and backwards expression of it.

The original cancel culture arose in the mind and heart of God.

It began minutes after the sin of Adam and Eve, when God promised a Redeemer (cf. Gen. 3:15), and it would be realized four millennia later when Christ came and canceled upon the Cross humanity’s eternal debt of sin, meriting for us the grace of forgiveness for all our personal sins.

Quite unlike our modern bloodthirsty cancel culture that seeks to assassinate and destroy the person, God’s cancel culture is based on mercy that flows from the Blood of Christ. It seeks to assassinate and destroy our sins while redeeming the person in return, filling us with His very life of sanctifying grace, so much so that He wishes to come and make His abode in our souls.

While the modern cancel culture tries to elicit and keep us in fear, God’s cancel culture is all about love and trust.

While the modern cancel culture tries to marginalize and admit only those who comply with its foolish party line, in God’s cancel culture all can approach, for, having been lifted up on the Cross, Christ wills to draw all to Himself.

No matter what may befall us in this life, regardless of the trials we may be asked by God to undergo, as Catholics we are citizens of heaven by Baptism and so must acclimate ourselves to the cancel culture characteristic of God’s Kingdom. Therefore, the good and frequent use of confession with true sorrow and a firm purpose of amendment is of great importance in our lives.

And that is where we find the most significant difference between these two cancel cultures.

Whereas the kingdom of “woke” strives to remember our sins, in the Kingdom of God, He chooses to forget them entirely.