The Devil Hates Priests. This is why.
St. John Chrysostom, I am told, said that the floor of hell is carpeted with the skulls of priests. I have never located the source. Nonetheless, when we hear our Lord’s words about millstones and those who deserve them, and we hear his words about “to whom much is given” et cetera, it seems that some—no, a great deal—of trembling is in order. Priests, especially, should be terrified by these admonitions. The opportunities for either spectacular glory (not the world’s kind) or spectacular peril (also not the world’s kind) confront, each and every day, every single ordained man of the Catholic Church. A good sign that a priest grasps the reality of his responsibility and the price of failure is that he makes a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament each day.
And the Catholic laity must, must, must pray for priests every single day. The devil hates priests. He wants nothing more than to hand them over simultaneously to the disdain of the world and to the eternal pains of hell. Satan does not tire. Reports of the moral failings of clergy, from parish priests to princes of the Church, continue to embarrass the Church and discourage the faithful, and they remind us of our obligation to pray for priests, for their sake, and for the sake of those whose lives they touch for better or for ill, the seen and the unseen.
In all the chaos of disgraced cardinals on both sides of the Atlantic, you may have missed the unhappy news that a well respected and very well placed member of the clergy of an important East Coast diocese was accused a month or so ago of running a nationwide operation that peddled illegal methamphetamines. Also, he has been accused of laundering the money from said sales in a shop that vends devices designed to facilitate the practice of deviance. Alas, the charges continue: This priest is alleged to have indulged in these selfsame deviances in the company of other men in his rectory.
(I do not provide a link to the story for the very reason that even by mentioning it I risk provoking the fallen appetite for prurience that St. Augustine called “lust of the eyes” that has been exponentially exacerbated by the Internet.)
Should the sordid tale prove not to be a giant misunderstanding, it will be another terrible scandal the Church will have to bear and one that will shake the faith of who can say how many Catholics.
When I hear stories like this one, my go-to line is usually Belloc’s observation that the proof that the Catholic Church is a divine institution is that since the Crucifixion she has been thriving in spite ofthe shortcomings of those to whom our Lord entrusted her care. Nonetheless, this particular priest’s alleged behavior is disheartening. The debauchery of Pope Alexander VI, for example, who kept a few mistresses and arranged for positions for the children he sired, seems mild alongside our own age’s deviance.
Making matters more discouraging is that, in a very real sense, clerical deviance and its immediate victims are really the tip of the iceberg. In the case of the meth-dealing priest, his position, influence, and stature in his diocese cannot help but mean that the harm he caused is greater than we know. He was secretary to two bishops, and rector of the cathedral. It is anybody’s guess how much unseen damage this man did from these positions of diocesan authority. How many good priests did he prevent from becoming pastors? How many heretics did he see appointed to the diocesan schools? How much irreverent liturgy did he cause or permit, and how much good liturgy did he hinder? How many good vocations did he discourage?
How many souls did not get sound Catholic teaching or solid spiritual direction because of this priest? We really have no idea of the spiritualwreckage in the wake of this man’s career.
Pray for the victims of clerical sexual abuse. Pray for the priests whose transgressions have caused so much harm. Pray for the ordinaries who either deliberately concealed or turned a blind eye to the sins of their clergy.
And pray for the Catholics, whose number is known only to God, who suffered—some in ignorance, some in painfully acute awareness—the deception, scheming, irreverence, and heresy of clergy whose intellects and wills, intended for the service of God, were disfigured by their horrifying sins.
By Christopher Check
Why don’t you take your trolling elsewhere. You don’t need to spread your venom here.
If you are looking for an interesting project, work out the probability that all the prophecies about the Messiah would all be fulfilled, and the probability that the prophecy concerning Cyrus the Great, king of ancient Persia, would be fulfilled and he would do as prophesied about 200 years before he was even born. Consider that the DNA / genes were far stronger in the days following creation, and calculate the rate of degradation of these genes to the present day and be amazed that you are still a functioning human being. Consider the fact that you did not ask to be born, you did not come here on your own and will probably leave against your will. Consider the question of WHY you were born at all, and don’t give me the biological facts unless you believe you have no soul (which biologically your parents couldn’t give you) and, in any case, seems to be more dead than alive. Calculate the probability of your existence as a functioning system if you were the result of random events.
Consider how, post creation, siblings married each other and even lived to ages unimaginable to us today. If I remember correctly, since it is late and I am too lazy to look it up, Adam lived to be over 700 years old. Just imagine how many children he must have had not to mention those of his contemporaries and descendants. Is it so hard to realize that just as we cannot see these atomic and sub-atomic particles or even the electricity that keeps the kettle boiling (without a measuring device, of course) that we are visually blind to the spirit world? It seems to me that your intellectual arrogance keeps you stuck in your own views. There is none so blind as the one who does not want to see, or, as the Bible has it and I paraphrase it, you can’t teach anything to one who believes he already has the fullness of knowledge and wisdom, any more than you can put more water in a glass that is already full.
Reflecting on your comments above, it is evident that you have absorbed an incredible amount of fake news about God, the Church and the Bible and imbibed it to the full. Are you seeking the truth or simply trying to display your bias, not to mention your intellectual arrogance? Prove that there is no devil, no God. Where is your evidence?
Pray also for those priests wrongly accused and jailed – their lives turned into one of spiritual and physical suffering. Priests are sitting ducks when it comes to false accusations especially of the hidden crimes of sexual abuse and this particularly in a puritanical culture, not to mention one that hates Catholics based on a false understanding of the religion.
Pray that the Lord enlightens us all. False accusation is one of satan’s favorite tools – if he can’t successfully tempt them, he can nail them with false accusations. Either way, he scores. and then he scores by the sins of those who vilify others. Jesus said in a modern day message: ‘Do not let the sin of another lead to your own condemnation’. Wise words from the Just Judge whose judgement no-one will escape.
Re: ‘If we have a Puritanical society, (and we do to a slowly but ever lessening extent), then this is because of Christianity and in particular the Catholic Church’s manic obsession with sex’.
Reply:
If one has sex (conjugal love) the way the Creator intended it then there is no need for puritanical guilt; sex was designed for pleasure and the procreation of children. However, if one engages in illicit hedonistic relationships then there is every basis for shame and guilt as is generally found in these relationships that are so deceitfully promoted by popular culture.
The Catholic Church advocates beautiful, loving sex in licit relationships as designed by the Creator; if that is redefined as ‘manic obsession with sex’ then one of us is not speaking plainly. What I would describe as a ‘manic obsession with sex’ is the acceptance of unbridled sexual intimacy whenever and with whoever. This is using the partner as a sexual prop to satisfy one’s selfish passions; this is not loving or caring – it is abuse, plain and simple. In all the talk of the right to abortion, there is scant mention of the fact that a woman has a right to have her body respected rather than being treated as a punchbag for passion and thereafter savaged in her most intimate parts to remove the fruits of inappropriate intercourse.
There has been sexual abuse by clerics who, as part of the fallen human race, are just as susceptible to sexual abuse and sin as anybody else. Yes, we do consider that they should be above this sort of sin since they have supposedly chosen to devote their lives to a higher calling and we hate hypocrisy in others. Jesus, in His modern Messages, has said that He is cleaning up His Church, starting at the sanctuary and that these sort of things will not be hidden or tolerated.
The Messages (True Life in God and those to Debra of Australia) also note that some clerics will be falsely accused. Nevertheless, two evils do not make a good in my humble opinion. Falsely accusing a person and destroying their character and livelihood is a second only to murder; in fact, I think it is worse. If one follows your argument, then all of us are should be held liable for the evil done by others. If there is no such thing as evil, what are you complaining about? If you think that there is no devil, then you can keep on sleeping until you meet him. He probably won’t bother you much now since he has fooled you already and you are unlikely to put up much resistance; he has already defeated you.
As to celibate lion males who are virgins, I have no knowledge of them; I leave that to you. It sounds to me like a contradiction in terms but I daresay you have studied it as a justification for your own view. Animal behavior is not a model for humans who have a higher calling but I grant you that in many ways their behavior puts many humans to shame.
Your logic is deficient; exceptions prove the rule and it is ridiculous to taint the whole priesthood with the sins of few, just as one cannot claim holiness for all based on the holiness of some. In any population, if one can determine the norm then, by definition, there are those on either side of the norm. As to dressing up, don’t we all dress up? These days ugliness is in fashion, the uglier, the better and we hate those who don’t dress the way we do just as we hate those who behave differently. Satan, in his spite, hates all of the Lord’s creation and mankind, as His highest creation, is Satan’s target; the more he can debase humans by making them ugly in mind and matter, the more successful he is in exercising his hatred of the Lord God. So, defile your natural beauty with tattoos and ugly, indecent clothing and defile your spiritual beauty and you are all his to torment forever.
Re: ‘These men are disordered. There is something about them that makes them different from other men. They didn’t fit in with the rest of society, so they found sanctuary within a disordered organization that protected their sexual deviancy.’
Reply: Yes, their behavior is disordered and they don’t fit into decent society any more than the deviants in the general public. But, as long as there is life, there is the chance for abandoning evil and embracing goodness. By the way, the legal system is protecting sexual deviancy these days – does that make your argument ridiculous or simply politically incorrect?
Re: ‘You speak of a false understanding of the religion – what false understanding do you speak of? Most Catholics have never read the bible or the catechism. Most Catholics don’t understand their own religion. Most Catholics don’t even know that the default position of the Church is that aborted, miscarried and stillborns who are not baptized are sent to HELL. If the Catholic god sends complete innocents to Hell, that god is incorrigibly evil, and deserves contempt, not worship.’
Reply: You are right that many who claim to be Catholics do not know their religion much less practice it. Many have not read the Bible in its entirety nor even understood it. This is due to poor catechesis for one or more reasons but there is a lifetime to redress this for each individual – life is an on-going process of spiritual growth and people are all in different stages so one can expect ignorant, half-baked and unwise opinions and beliefs in the interim. It is up to the wise to teach the ignorant.
The Catholic Church teaches that these unbaptized babies do not generally enter heaven but they do not experience the eternal damnation and associated suffering of hell, just as the just did not suffer eternal suffering in hell before the Resurrection of Christ. You can check out the catechism of the Catholic Church. I would go further than you and state that most Christians do not understand either their own religion or the Catholic religion or they would become Catholic. God did not suddenly change His mind about His teachings to accommodate Luther’s views.
Regarding miracles, the Church investigates these claims very rigorously, you will be pleased to discover. Miracles happen even today. Study the evidence, e.g. the basis for canonizations, and opinions of experts and do not rely so heavily on your own preconceived ideas.
You’re kidding! Right?