Religious Fads

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | May 12, 2025

In the 1980s, during an ordination Mass in the upper Midwest, a kindly bishop offered a thought-provoking contrarian homily. He said priests should not treat the people like sheep. Sheep are, well, kind of dumb. A bunch of sheep is a flock, not a herd. But they have a passive herd mentality as they silently line up for the slaughterhouse. A sensitive, educated priest should never malign his sensitive and educated people by calling them sheep. But this bishop’s advice soon became just another tired—and soon to be retired—religious fad.

In the 1980s religious and cultural milieu, the Catholic press echoed the enlightened glow of the insight. Catholics are highly intelligent. Some of them even went to college. Never treat them like dumb sheep. Priests heard from their parishioners: "Father, don't treat us like sheep."

But the real meaning of the protest eventually came into focus: Do not expect us to accept the controversial teachings of the Church like dumb sheep, because we are plenty smart. These highly educated and well-read Catholics, like sheep, promoted the new fad in unison. They were indeed sheep. They were smart sheep. But they didn’t know they were sheep and members of the flock of secularism.

Every generation witnesses objections to the so-called controversial teachings of the Church. The proponents who agitate for change in the Church’s teaching on ordination, human sexuality, and human life might change costumes according to the latest fads to hide among the sheep. (Today’s fad, designed to approve the LGBTQ+ ideologies, has something to do with “new anthropological studies”—as if the fossils of Peking Man will reveal sodomy as a family value.)

The latest fads repackage the tired old heresies and objections to Church teaching and, like Madison Avenue executives, market worn-out heresies with persuasive advertising gimmicks. But here’s an inconvenient dogma of the human condition: We are sheep and always will be sheep. Name the flock of your choice, but never deny your sheepitude (to coin a term).

Historians tell us that the most highly educated group of people in the 20th century—the highest number of people educated in universities with science degrees and degrees in the humanities—was found in Germany in the 1930s. History would soon disclose that the best and the brightest were also sheep. If there is doubt whether intelligent people like you and me are sheep, here is a two-word hint: "Sieg heil!" Every shepherd of every flock knows his sheep. And sheep go meekly to the slaughter.

Here is another dogma of faith by our secular, and even Christian, shepherds: It does not matter what you believe, as long as you are a good person. The sentiment sounds so innocent, so open-minded. But at root, it is an ugly and destructive half-truth. Like the Serpent’s half-truth in the Garden, the shepherds of secularism use their dogma to dismiss the entire Christian religion, because the claim separates goodness from Godliness. Our culture and schools, apart from the moorings to God’s goodness, lead to those once-shocking—and now routine—headlines.

Our Heavenly Father is the source of all that is good. Jesus asks the rich young man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (Mk. 10:18) Only then does Jesus remind the rich young man of the Commandments of the all-good God: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.” (Mk. 10:19)

Jesus is our lifeline to the Father. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish… I and the Father are one.” (Jn. 10:27-30) “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt. 11:27)

There are many flocks and many shepherds. Some shepherds are good; many are hirelings. Some think that money is the good shepherd that can save the world from every problem. Others believe technology is the good shepherd that saves us from our enemies. But Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (Jn. 10:11) The love of a good shepherd is costly.

Our unavoidable status as sheep is humbling. Intelligent or not, we are herd animals. But Jesus became the Lamb of God by choice. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8) By His passion and death, Jesus takes away the sins of the world. Jesus, the Lamb once slain but risen from the dead, is now the Good Shepherd Who came into the world to bring us into His sheepfold. We are sheep, and Jesus preceded us as the Lamb of God.

But Jesus without His Church is inaccessible and untouchable. After Peter’s witness to the divinity of Jesus (cf. Mt 26:63), Jesus elevates him to the papacy: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the [gates of hell] shall not prevail against it.” (Mt. 16:18) The Church guarantees the continuity of the faith.

We do not encounter the Good Shepherd on the opinion page of our newspapers or in the latest religious fads. (Even those emotional Protestant mega-churches fall short.) The proclamation of the Word comes to completion in Holy Communion, and Jesus sends us forth as good shepherds participating in His goodness. We encounter the Good Shepherd in the reality of His Church, His sacraments, and within Christian families that safeguard the purity of His truth throughout history.

Intelligent or not too bright, as members of a sheepfold, we ask, “Where is my true flock?” Be of good cheer. “We are his people, and the sheep of his flock.” (Ps. 100:3)