So I am off to Mass again today to thank God for my life, my wife, my baby, my friends & my health. I think its sad that so many people make excuses for why they don't belong to or attend a Church. I mostly feel its out of ignorance, laziness or pure apathy.
People tell me they don't go to church because they dont believe in the Church or the priests or ministers. I dont go to Church FOR the priests or the minister or even the people at Church. I go for GOD.
I attended Mass last night in Melbourne. There would have been no more than forty people at Mass and no one under fifty except me and some young man next to me who looks like a teacher in the school who appeared to be there by obligation (not participating in the prayers or hymns, constantly looking at his watch) and the Vietnamese priest was hardly intelligible and looked about 80.
But when the priest said the prayers of consecration (when he prays over the bread and wine & it becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus), I felt tingles down my spine & a warm feeling in my body.
I knew then for certain that it doesn't matter who the priest is, GOD is still in His Church.
Despite all my dramas I have had with the hierarchy and the imposters wearing priests' clothing, I know Jesus is still in the Eucharist & giving His Spirit to those who bother to get out of their own way to worship Him.
Father Kevin that is the exact reason why I also go to mass.Be strong and carry on ,you have great courage
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ReplyDeleteHi there. You are 100% right. Jesus is present in the Eucharist. We know this to be clearly revealed by the Holy Spirit in John 6:34-57; Matt. 26:26-28; Mark. 14:22,24; Luke 22;19-20; 1 Cor. 11:24-25 Rom. 14:14-18; 1 Cor. 8:1-13 and 1 Tim. 4:3.
ReplyDeleteI think we share something in common. You see, I like you love my Catholic faith, love the Church and love Jesus my Lord who is my only hope of salvation. Like you I myself am often frustrated by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. There are of course many holy and saintly priests and bishops and yet there are others that make decisions which cause me much concern.
However, in all this I must respect the teaching of our God who did not set up an individualistic Church nor a democratic one, but in His infinite wisdom and holiness decided to proclaim a hierarchical and visible Church with an order of leaders: Matt. 16:18; 18:18: Acts 20:17,28; 1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1; Titus 1:7; 1 Tim. 5:17; Titus 1:5; James 5:14 and 1 Tim. 3:8.
While Jesus did not promise the leaders would be immaculate he did promise that in their official teaching capacity of dogma the magisterium would be infallible: Luke 10:16; Matt. 10:20; Luke 12:12; Matt. 16:18-19; John 14:16; John 14:26; John 16:13; Matt. 18:17-18; 1 Tim. 3:15 and 1 Cor. 2:13.
The leaders have the power to bind and loose and govern the Church pastorally. For any sinful pastoral or disciplinary decision they make they will be held accountable more highly then others due to their increased culpability. Indeed like all of us they will have to account for their unrepented sins, either in this life of the next. If they have any unrepented mortal sins then they have chosen to reject God’s grace and mercy and have freely chosen an eternity of separation from God and pain and suffering.
I am frustrated at the sinfulness of the clergy and negligence. How much irreversible damage has the sex abuse scandal brought upon the body of Christ? As if taking the innocence of the Child was not depraved, heinous or evil enough, a worse act has been committed for many of these poor souls have been robbed of their faith. Sure, the media has overstated and exaggerated the problem and indeed most of the clergy are holy and faithful men and the criminals are only a minute fraction of the clergy. However, even one case of sexual abuse is one to many.
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ReplyDeleteI have to be strong however and remind myself that Jesus warned of sinners in the Church and despite the sinfulness of the clergy the Church is still the vessel of grace on this Earth and only hope of salvation. In fact, we know that scandals have always existed inside the Church since Apostolic times (Matt. 13:24-30). In fact Christ taught that God allows sinners to remain inside the Church until the day of judgment when they will receive their chosen fate (Matt. 13:47-50). At yet Jesus has said that no matter how bad things get the gates of hell would never prevail (Matt. 16:18). Jesus in fact addressed the matter of evil clergy and told the Jewish people that they were obligated to follow the ‘teachings’ of the sinful leaders who taught the law and ignore the way they lived their life since despite their sinfulness they sat in the seat of Moses (Matt. 23:2-3). So Christ commanded them to follow what they taught about the faith, but to reject the way those leaders lived their own private lives. And indeed the Jewish people knew the difference between the teaching authority of a person and their sinful behaviour (Matt. 23:2-3). Leaders have always made mistakes. St. Peter denied Jesus several times and yet was chosen to be the first Pope and author infallibly scripture (Matt. 26:70-72 and Mark 14:68-70;), Judas the Apostle betrayed Jesus, St. Paul killed Christians and was complicit in the murdering of St. Stephen the first Christian martyr, St. Thomas refused to believe in the risen Lord despite the miracles of Christ and Jesus affirming that He would rise from the dead (John 20:24-25) and yet evangelized an entire country – India and all of the apostles abandoned Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and yet these men would later bring the gospel to the entire world. Jesus in fact said that there would be unfaithful people in the Church and at the end of time God would sort the good and the bad (Jer. 24:1-10 and Matt. 13:47-50). We cannot blame Peter for Judas and we cannot blame the good clergy and members of the body for the crimes committed by the bad. We must pray for the sinners and continuously do penance for their conversion and salvation as well as the grace and blessings needed for their innocent victims.
Mr. Lee in charity I must advise you that by ignoring your Holy Orders which are an irrevocable sacrament and marrying illicitly which is therefore in effect committing fornication you are in a perpetual state of mortal sin. You cannot be forgiven for these mortal sins unless you repent and complete restitution by ceasing your sexual relations and coming back into full communion with the Church. Things will of course be different because you now have a child you need to take care of but the Church will provide guidance on how to address the disorder created by your sins. You are not able to take the Eucharist either and it pains me to know that somebody who knows that Christ is present in the sacrament cannot receive Jesus, even though you know Jesus waits for you. As you know my brother, a single unrepented mortal sin on our soul means we have chosen to reject Christ and selected instead to go to hell. I would hate for this to happen to you.
I hope you do not mind my forwardness brother. I hope to speak out in charity. I am a terrible sinner myself, like every single human that has ever lived except Our beautiful Mother Mary, Refuge of Sinners.
It must be hard not being able to take communion. Please take this to prayer and consider my comments.
Peace be with you.
why so formal? you dont have to call me Mr Lee.. thats my Dad.. Im just Kevin Lee..
DeleteWell Mr Smithson, I found your comments a little confusing. Of course fornication is sin. I used be the first to have been critical of priests who leave their sacred ministry to marry. How could anyone give up that awesome dignity of the holy roman catholic priesthood for a woman? I could not understand it. But then I reflected on how many good and holy priests I have met who are not suffering psychologically for the sacrifice of their sexuality and natural human desire for intimacy and love. Not many. You would have no idea. All you who criticise and correct me for my assessment of the reality of priestly infidelity do not live with priests. You do not see their real lived celibacy. All you see if the one hour on Sunday when they put on their holy robes and look all holy and in tune with the divine and hear their pious platitudes and you assume him to be holy and whatever other superlatives you used to describe these presumedly "sacred priests". I have been one for 20 years (and spent six years in formation) Mr Smithson and I regret to inform you, I would not have met 10 authentic holy men in all that time. I have met some really good actors who put on their best smiles for the faithful when they see them outside their presbytery, but I have heard the worst profanities uttered from the mouths of these same 'holy priests' and I have been a police chaplain for fourteen years and never heard them swear like clerics! Now all this comes as a shock to the laity who refuse to believe me. They call me a liar and a traitor to the church. But I am not a traitor for I have already told you I pray faithfully the prayers of the church every day and attend Mass if I am unable to continue to offer the holy sacrifice myself.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, it was all the hypocrisy I turned my back on, not the priesthood or celibacy. I see celibacy as a shroud that hides the dead and rotting wounds of sexual abuse, no longer as a life giving grace filled expression of faith and commitment to the after-life that I once thought it to be.
I see Pope Benedict's resignation as an admission of his failure to address the death of the church in this century under his pretentious pontificate.
Call me what you will and condemn me to hell with your judgmentalism but I don't think God wants the church to continue the pretence that celibacy is. When I see all the wimpy losers becoming priests today because of the obstacle of a sexless church, I feel great sadness..
Dear Mr. Lee, I sincerely made my comments bone fide. I did not wish to cause you any disdain. I must be clear and honest and say that sadly you have failed to address any of the points I made in my post. Rather you composed your response using various ad hominems, red herrings and making a few assumptions about me. For example, I myself am celibate and live a celibate life. I will not go into details here but I will inform you I am NOT homosexual and I will continue to be celibate for the duration of my life.
ReplyDeleteTherefore all your comments about me ‘not understanding’ or having ‘no idea’ are immediately made invalid since I indeed do know what it is like to live a celibate life. It frees me so I can serve God full time 24/7.
Regarding your second point, you make an ‘appeal to experience’ and assert that you know many ‘bad priests’ and you know many priests who have violated celibacy. Again, I will not go into personal details about myself, but I could appeal to my own personal experience as well and interestingly I have been blessed to know many faithfully holy priests and bishops who are celibate. An appeal to authority or experience however is not a legitimate argument since appealing to owns own experience is a logical fallacy since it falls back onto subjectivity. Your experience may have been bad and mine clearly has been great.
Additionally as a priest it is sad you say who cannot name 10 holy men, when we have many saints such as St Padre Pio and St John Marie Vianney who by miracles which have been attested by scientific examination by atheists are incorrupt. Due to their piety and holiness their bodies have been preserved. In fact there are hundreds of incorruptibles.
Sadly, you saw fit to create a straw man and appeal to your own personal experience but you wilfully ignored my comments about Christ creating One Holy visible Church built on St. Peter. I also feel like you have grossly misrepresented the teachings of Jesus who said the ‘gates of hades would not prevail’ and that the Holy Spirit would ‘be with you until the end of time’. The Church will never die. Out of the 265 Popes, even secular historians agree most were holy and faithful men and indeed many are saints. You criticize the current Holy Father, but numbers have increased in his pontificate. It actually depends on the statistics you look at. In the US thousands upon thousands of protestants – many of them protestant ministers become Catholic each year and during the papacy of Benedict XVI, an entire Anglican diocese and many schismatic groups like a certain Armenian Orthodox diocese came into full communion with the Church. Indeed the Holy Father has much to be happy with. As somebody who has close contact with many Catholic youths in university I can tell you many are becoming theologians or school teachers and they are all orthodox and faithful in their theologies.
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ReplyDeleteI regret that although I addressed all your comments about so called ‘bad people’ in the Church you decided it would be easier to ignore it. But brother we cannot do it. If you do not like the current Holy Father I wonder what your views are on St. Peter, the first pontiff. He after all cut of the ear of Malcus, denied our Lord several times, argued with God himself in Acts and made a foolish quip during the transfiguration. I refer you back to my comments in my previous post and would like you to please respond directly to them. I am referring to my paragraph on the bad people in the Church and my response about this always being the case – starting with the Apostles themselves - and never being a legitimate reason for splitting from or leaving the Church or disobeying the bishops who are successors to the Apostles.
Again I will repeat, Jesus addressed the matter of evil clergy and told the Jewish people that they were obligated to follow the ‘teachings’ of the sinful leaders who taught the law and ignore the way they lived their life since despite their sinfulness they sat in the seat of Moses (Matt. 23:2-3).
A historical case in point would be the Arian heresy during the early years of the Church. There is not salvation outside the Church and there is no reason to split from the Church. Doing so as St Paul clearly teaches is to choose to cut yourself of from the body of Christ and choose eternal damnation.
No matter how bad the ‘people’ in the Church get, even if 99% of them are bad, you cannot leave the Church or disobey the hierarchy as you put it. And this is nothing new. Most saints and doctors of the Church in fact have thought that most people within the Church choose hell. In fact you can find hundreds of quotes by the Fathers, Saints and Doctors of the Church who say that most people even within the Church prefer to continue on in mortal sin and choose hell over God.
Take for example the following quote from St. Louis de Montfort who said:
‘The number of the elect is so small — so small — that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief: one here and there, scattered up and down the world.’
More to the point St. Chrysostom, Father and Doctor of the Church writing in the mid 300s (way before your time) was already making the following comment:
“I do not speak rashly, but as I feel and think. I do not think that many priests are saved, but that those who perish are far more numerous.”
St. Chrysostom is already saying 1600 years before your commentary that most priests have chosen to engage in mortal sin and therefore chosen Hell. He was a millennia and a half before you and already saying something similar.
Notice however, that St. Chrysostom, like the saints, doctors and Apostles do not say its ok to now reject the teachings of Jesus about the ‘unity’ of his Church and that we can now make up our own dogma. Notice how he never says we can disobey the bishop and split from the Church or be saved outside the Church.
We have to accept the teachings on faith and morals of the magisterium and we cannot disagree with these for they are de fide given to us by the Holy Ghost.
However, on matters of Church disciple while we need to obey them, as Christ taught in ecclesiastical disciplinary matters, but we can disagree with them, openly if we so wish even though we must accept the decision of our superior who will be judged by God.
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ReplyDeleteI feel you may already know all this Mr. Lee. Therefore if I may be honest, and speak from my heart, I feel that you are using all these as excuses to justify your own sinful behaviour. I sense a great deal of hostility in your comments. For example you call practically all seminarians ‘wimpy losers’ and again my experience has been different. I have known many manly seminarians, and many feminine sisters in postulancy. Hostility seems to be furthered by the fact you refer continuously to bad people in the Church….bad people in the Church…bad people in the Church…and that seems to be your only response, even though I addressed it in detail in my previous post, namely pointing out that the Apostles themselves were sinful men. One committing grave sins of murder. Yet you continue…bad people in the Church … bad people in the Church. That’s sadly not a response to reject the Church – you cannot reject Peter because of Judas. Rather you are resorting to another fallacy called ‘tu quoque’ which is an appeal to hypocrisy. It’s like a man who is smoking being told by a fat man drinking a coke that smoking is bad and unhealthy and the smoker turning around and saying look who’s taking. The smoker has not refuted the point that smoking is bad. The premise still stands and has not been disproven. Similarly, your scandalous and mortally sinful behaviour brother cannot be excused by other priests committing mortal sins.
It’s sad that you call me judgmental and condemning you to hell, but you should know better since you went to seminary. We Catholics never condemn anybody to hell. In our 2000 year history the Catholic Church has never proclaimed anybody is in hell. Only God the Son can judge the heart. In fact brother I have every confidence in you, that you will, although not necessarily soon, you will someday return to full communion with the Church and repent through confession and regain the state of grace. However, all I have stated are the facts as you well know - If we are in mortal sin we choose our self to go to hell. I do not send you there, God does not send you there, you choose it freely. I have every hope you will make it to heaven, but to get there you must repent of these mortal sins, make your restitution and get back into the state of grace through the mercy of confession. I have every confidence this will occur, even if you are hostile now Im sure it will happen, because I am praying and doing penance for you because I love you!!!
Your hostility however shines through just by the language you: “wimpy losers”, “pretence of celibacy”, “sexless church”, “death of the church” etc….
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ReplyDeleteDear Sir, I agree with the posters on your wall. I actually only thought this kind of scandal occurred here in the US. My heart and prayers also go out to you, and I know that you must have had some terrible hardships. For that I am very sorry. But my sympathy for you only extends to a certain point.
ReplyDeleteYou need to be called out on your doleful attempt to defend your depraved conduct. You know what you did and are doing is wrong and you also know that pointing the finger at others is no validation. Lets call a spade a spade here. You gave into the flesh and the temptations we all suffer from. You then proceeded to manufacture excuses for those grave sins. If you were honest and sincerely concerned about these issues then you would have decided to go down the route of heroic virtue like the saints about become a renewer of the Church. You would have copied St Francis of Assisi and created a new order to ‘re-build’ the Church and fight politics and corruption through holiness, penance and virtue. St Teresa of Avila who could see no difference between the Carmelite convent and living on the outside founded the Discalced Carmelites. St Dominic founded the Dominicans to fight the Albigensian heretics. St. Eugene De Mazenod founded the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to re-evangelize France after the French Revolution. Fr Apostoli and Fr Groshel founded the Franciscans of the Renewal to reform the worldliness which crept into the Capuchins and St Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits to counter the Protestant heresy. New orders are being created during every age of the Church either to reform an order which has steered away from its charism or to address a current issue facing the Church. You had numerous options. If you wanted a stricter order you could have left the secular priesthood and joined a monastic order or a traditionalist order like the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter who are very strict about the conduct of their fathers. Or you could have founded our own order and collected like minded priests around your country to form an order to promote holiness, faithfulness, virtue and penance with a missionary focus on the new evangelization.
So, don’t go on misrepresenting the facts to the public. You had numerous options, but choose to give into your sin. Stop justifying yourself. I myself stuggle with ongoing sins which are habitual but rather than condoning them, I humble myself and go back to confession and recognize their evilness. Sure you fell, but you could have washed yourself clean in confession. You however prefer to continue the sin.
Yours in JMJ +
CJ
I will address your comments in due time Alisha D & a563d1f0-7701-11e2-895e-000f20980440 (that's a strange name by the way) but I am pressed for time. I find your responses are interesting because you sound like myself twenty years back.. Back before I realised how plastic many priests whom I admired really were.
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ReplyDeleteKevin I must agree with the comments of Alisha who is clearly distressed at this whole scandal. @ Alisha, thank you for those links I actually read them myself and found them very informative.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that Kevin in responding to you again fell back onto a straw man and used a red herring. Finally he again used a tu quoque by stating that:
"Back before I realised how plastic many priests whom I admired really were"
Kevin, it seems you will not address the issues here and fall back onto the logical fallacies Alisha has listed and so passionately identified you as continuously falling back on.
I will not repeat the comments of others but I will say I wonder what people like St Maximilian Kolbe, St Anthony of Padua, St. John Vianney, St. Francis Xavier and all of the priestly martyrs would say about your excuses and self pity. They suffered far more and far worse then you and become heroic saints. St. Edmund Campion after all was tortured and hung, drawn and quartered as well as being celibate.
I hope we don't miss the issue here. As Alisha and I think everyone who responded to you said, nobody 'deserves' to go to heaven. Actually since almost every human who has ever lived has committed a mortal sin most of us actually deserve heaven. Its only by the blood of Christ that we are saved. We are all sinners but I think the issue is whether we accept the grace we are given to repent.
Kevin, all in all I hope you are not offended. In fact whats clear is that the people on here actually care for you. Nobody has or is condemning you. I would also like to second the comments of John Smithson. We are praying and doing penance for you. Perhaps you can pray for us as well. I don't think anybody has mentioned that yet, and part of being in Christ is to pray for one another so perhaps you can ask the Lord to give us grace and humble us, and work our our salvation - Perhaps tonight when you say your Divine Office. I hope you have a blessed Lent. Clare J