Above is a compilation of video footage from my August vacation to Eastern Europe. Check it out. Anyways, that isn’t topic of this post.
The topic is essentially why we should stay Catholic amidst all of this chaos. Anyone who has been paying attention to the news knows what I’m talking about. I don’t think that I need to describe it here. We have options don’t we? There’s always one of the many Evangelical Churches. We could pull a Rod Dreher and convert to Orthodoxy, though they’re having massive jurisdictional squabbles among Patriarchates right now. We could even chuck Jesus altogether and go for Islam. Most Catholics who leave the faith probably won’t choose any of these options. They’ll probably just stop going to Church altogether which is very sad.
The answer is to look to Scripture and Tradition. The people of God have always gone through dark times. They aren’t good but they aren’t forever. It starts in the Old Testament. We know that the Israelites worshipped a golden calf. We know that at the time of Elijah, all but 7,000 of the nation of Israel was worshipping Baal.
The New Testament doesn’t get much better. Christ’s number one disciple Peter denies Him three times. Pretty depressing, isn’t it? It seems that two thousand years later, Peter’s successor isn’t far behind. Can you imagine being a priest in the 1530’s when the so called reformation was in full swing? Imagine the conversation that two priests in the Vatican would have had at that time.
Priest 1: Any interesting current events?
Priest 2: Yeah, we just lost England.
Another one bites the dust. It couldn’t have been a good time for these two priests, let alone for the people who lived in England. Despite all of this, the Church would eventually go through the Council of Trent, have it implemented by Pope Pius V and see massive success due to his true reforms.
About every 500 years, the Church needs a Pope to straighten out the Church and get it into gear. In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great came along and organized the Church when Western Europe was in tatters. In the eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII cleaned up a very messy and dysfunctional ecclesial body and instituted many reforms such as proper priestly formation. About 500 years after Gregory VII, we had Pius V whom I mentioned earlier. He stopped the bleeding wounds of the Church and set the stage for centuries of success.
It’s about that time. We’re about 450 years after the pontificate of Pope Pius V and the Church is bleeding once again. It’s full of homosexual priests who commit abominable acts and bishops who protect them. It’s full of a homosexual mafia with high ranking clerics like the recently disgraced McCarrick. It’s also full of bad catechesis, modernism, and other heresies.
Despite all of this, I know that a good Pope is on the way. We’re almost there. I don’t know who it’ll be but that really doesn’t matter until he comes. Until then, what is a faithful Catholic to do? It’s simple, we’re to go to Mass, pray the rosary, read our Scriptures, and spread the faith. We also need to stay in the Church because it’s been through bad times before and it will emerge stronger than ever.
I often think of the ordinary, dedicated parish priest, usually living alone and somewhat set apart from the community in a shabby, empty house. A man that gave up the prospect of a family life and living the life of a badly paid social worker in fractured, isolated communities. (Sean Bean’s parish priest in the British TV series “Broken” did a good job of portraying a man in this situation – although the plot and background were dramatic.)
Well the ordinary priest has it even more rough now and suffers because the reputation of the clergy and Church has been dragged through the mire. The hierarchy are responsible, and it has become quite clear that too many archbishops, cardinals and popes are politicians first and foremost, too often incompetent or corrupt, and all too rarely holy men. Who would be a Catholic priest? It must be a thankless task.
Hi Christopher,
I completely agree with you. In this day and age the priesthood has a very bad reputation, at least in Western countries. The priests who commit these crimes are individually responsible for their crimes but many bishops have enabled them to do this, starting with poor formation, then introducing no consequences for bad behavior besides moving them to a different parish. Shame on them.
I have to ask, do you attend the TLM? I attend one and I’ve talked to Priests about their formation. It’s very strict discipline, lots of prayer and traditional theology. Apparently if you’re a homo or effeminate, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. If you’re once caught doing anything homosexual you’re expelled immediately. This is the kind of priestly formation needed.
I’m not saying that there are no good non-TLM priests in the Western world, it’s just that they seem to be the exceptions. Who would want to be a non-Traditional priest in the Western World these days?
Thanks for sharing and God bless,
Allan
Allan,
I am not familiar with the terms “TLM” and “formation”.
Christopher
Traditional Latin Mass. Formation refers to how priests are trained.
Ah, I suspected that is what you meant but I was guessing and had to be sure.
No I have never attended a Latin Mass. I often discuss Mass with my father (he is an organist and choirmaster and takes the liturgy very seriously). He pointed out to me that the modern Mass appears to concentrate on the priest (facing the congregation, back to the altar etc.) whereas the TLM, as you put it, has the priest actually leading the congregation; Mass did not appear to depend on the person of the priest.
As for formation of priests I wouldn’t know anything about that. I have no problem with people who might be of “homosexual” inclination becoming priests because their condition should be irrelevant to their life as a priest. The difficulty we appear to be having is a lack of proper management and control of clerics by the Church hierarchy, even the admirable Benedict XVI appears to have been lacking in that respect.