7/15/08 Update: Relevant link to newspaper article click here. Priests must submit reassignment preferences by July 15th. "However, Andrew Walton, a spokesman for the diocese, said that priests were only being asked to express preferences for assignment." Boy that's the understatement of the year. Our inside sources inform us that a significant number of priests have not bothered to apply for reassignment or even requested to review the parish profiles. We presume this is because they fully realize that the reassignments are a done deal. In fact, we just learned of three additional priests in the past two days who have already been assigned outside the diocese, and the priest reassignments have not even been announced yet.
Save the Priesthood
by Chris, A Mater Ecclesiae Parishioner
When you see a priest, you should say, "There is he who made me a child of God, and opened Heaven to me by holy Baptism; he who purified me after I had sinned; who gives nourishment to my soul." At the sight of a church tower, you may say, "What is there in that place?" "The Body of Our Lord. " "Why is He there?" "Because a priest has been there, and has said holy Mass."
-St. John Vianney
In the Catholic Church, our religious vocations are the lifeblood that sustains us. The Camden Diocese is imploding under a modernist agenda that is pushing "lay leadership" on the faithful. Accept this now for what it is; the blind leading the blind.
We have slumbered for too many generations in the Church. We have given and received bad catechesis, we have rebelled against God given revelation and the teaching of the Church. We have failed ourselves and our children with our contented ignorance. It is our materialism that has pacified us, and the cost of this comfortably numb state is nothing less than our souls.
Make no mistake about it. We are living in, as Dietrich von Hildebrand aptly named it, a devastated vineyard. The fruitful vineyard of the Lord, that for so many centuries and through so many persecutions and trials that has borne so much fruit, is a withered branch. Our children leave the church after their confirmation, and are only there so their parents can throw a party for the occasion. This cultural Catholocism is one who feels no obligation to either accept or reject the teachings of the church as a whole. And why should they, when they are neither taught these things, or that their soul's destiny hangs in the balance of whether they choose to live the Catholic life, or merely a pharisaical version of that life.
We move toward empty shells, dressed up as adult daycare. There is a constant drift towards the lowest common denominator, instead of pushing ourselves and each other (as a communion of saints should) toward the highest and the eternal goal which is Heaven. We have come to assume we will all go to Heaven and have become complacent. We are more interested in "dialogue" than in truth. This is a waste of time and usually money. We have a problem with buying worthy vessels to hold the Blood of Our Lord, but we put much of our treasure into funding committees and workshops designed to distract and never actually come to the truth.
We should be praying as we begin any endeavor, but there is no prayer as our diocesan planning officials begin dismantling the churches and parish communities built by our parents, and grandparents or further back. Dialogue purports that there is no absolute truth. Our Lord tells us He is the Way, and the Truth. Choose your side carefully. You can flounder away under committee meetings, photo ops and other feel good nonsense, or you can guide your life by the same lamp post that has for generations made men and women better themselves by forgetting themselves and conforming their hearts to Christ's.
Our lay leaders dialogue while the faith is dying. We are perishing. Our children stand very little chance in this world without a sense that they can choose a Catholic Church that stands apart from the world, and in most cases in opposition to it, or one that tries to dance with the Devil and make peace with him. There is no in between.
I went through a CCD program and observed as it failed my generation miserably. I fell away from the Church for a time, and when I returned, I noticed that though I had come back I had no peers. They had left, and had not returned. Pope John Paul II tells us in Catechesi Tradendae that catechesis is a sacred duty and a right of all the faithful. If we teach error, we have to account for that. It is not our opinion that we teach, but the Faith and how to live it. It is the right of our children and we are failing. The laity has been in charge of this since my generation, and they have failed miserably. That is why our children are leaving the church in droves. That is why even adults not only don't know the faith, but act with apathy towards it. The designers constantly pander to what their notion of "hip" is (which is usually very outdated) or what they think will bring youth back to the church. Keep in mind that whatever watered down version of current pop culture they dress up in church clothes, kids will see it as just that, and much less entertaining than what they can actually get with their pop culture. Entertainment is not religion, nor is excitement religion. Each year, a new trend arises from the sewage of pop culture, and we are trying to find ways to integrate that into our churches. By the time it is integrated, it is already outdated. From the tambourine and guitar bands of the 70's, to the praise and worship bands of today, we look to the world instead of just simply looking to our Catholic Heritage. Remember G.K. Chesteron's words:
which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
True, joyful and undiluted Catholicism is for all time, and in the bosom of this Church can we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We need our priests to shepherd us. Who would want to give their lives as a priest in the new "vision" of the church that is being put before us? Perhaps that is a goal of this agenda. Discourage vocations by emasculating and removing everything from the priesthood leaving it solely as a sacramental function.
Without our convents and monasteries, we have few holy examples, few modern living saints to guide us, to pray for us or to sacrifice for us. Indeed, these notions are largely ignored in the modern church. When I see a religious habit, I see behind it the power of God, where these days I see religious and see only the power suit.
We need to pray for holy men and women to lead us out of this spiritual desert. And we not only need to pray for good and holy priests, but we need to rise up now and defend them. We have precious few in this diocese, and we are watching as 21 of them at the writing of this piece are being sent into exile, forced into retirement or what have you. Yet if the priest shortage was the concern, would we not need to keep these priests? It must follow that they are being persecuted. I know as a Knight of Columbus that I took an oath to defend the priesthood, which I intended to do with my own life were it ever necessary. This is a time that I call on all knights of the diocese to rise up and defend their priests. Their vocations are being destroyed, their priesthood taken away from them, and their spiritual fatherhood disintegrated before our very eyes. If you do nothing now, you are not living up to your oath, and you will find yourself in a church devoid of the presence of Our Lord and in the middle of a lot of hand clapping and emptiness.
Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them. -Pope Saint Felix III
We are entering a dark time, and it will require men and women of virtue, courage and strength. We must rise to meet the challenges of our time, and defend our faith. Now, the priesthood needs our defense. Support your priests, and accept nothing less than priests. Pray and fast for them and for new vocations.
When the bell calls you to church, if you were asked, "Where are you going?" you might answer, "I am going to feed my soul." If someone were to ask you, pointing to the tabernacle, "What is that golden door?" "That is our storehouse, where the true Food of our souls is kept." "Who has the key? Who lays in the provisions? Who makes ready the feast, and who serves the table?" "The priest." "And what is the Food?" "The precious Body and Blood of Our Lord." O God! O God! how Thou hast loved us! See the power of the priest; out of a piece of bread the word of a priest makes a God. It is more than creating the world. . . . Someone said, "Does Saint Philomena, then, obey the Cure of Ars?" Indeed, she may well obey him, since God obeys him. -St. John Vianney
So can we live without our priests? Can we do without the Mass? Perhaps as we should, we can place the blame on ourselves. It is God's justice which brings chastisement into our lives, and it is always just.
St. John Eudes said:
The most evident mark of God's anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when he permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are more in name than in deed, preists who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
We have many good priests who are being persecuted, and there are those who are going along with the plan to dismantle our lives and replace it with something entirely different. If you do not resist, you will find yourself guided by the person that until then sat next to you in the pew, but that thinks highly enough of their place to lead the congregation in a desolate liturgy that is not the sacrifice of Calvary we need to sustain us. This is not the Church, and will not be the Church when they implement it. Consider the final message of Akita from Our Lady:
The work of the devil will infiltrate even the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate Me will be scorned and opposed by their conferees...churches and altars sacked, the Church will be full of those who accept compromise and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord. The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of My sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them.
If you don't see the writing on the wall, or the work that goes against the church your eyes are closed and you are still sleeping. The following prophecy was given by Our Lady to Ven. Sister Marrianne de Jesus Torres in the 16th century!
The sacred Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed and despised, for in doing this, one scorns and defiles the Church of God, and even God himself, represented by his priests. The Demon will try to persecute the Ministers of the Lord in every possible way, and he will labor with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation, corrupting many of them. These corrupted priests who will thus scandalize the Christian people, will incite the hatred of the bad Christians and the enemies of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to fall upon all the priests. This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous sufferings to the good pastors of the Church, to the great majority of good priests, and to the Supreme Pastor and Vicar of Christ on earth, who will shed secret and bitter tears in the presence of his God and Lord, beseeching light, sanctity and perfection for all the Clergy of the world, of which he is the King and Father. Moreover, in these unhappy times there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will lose themselves. Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women, and in this supreme moment of need of the Church, those whom it behooves to speak will fall silent.
This is for our time. Our Lady told Sr. Marianne that it was a prophecy for the 20th century, and the scandals we have endured have done this. We need our good and holy priests to be an example. They are trying to put two married ex-protestants on the fast track to the priesthood at present, and they are trying to replace the priesthood with the laity. And our priests who have given up their lives in service to Our Lord and to us are suffering and they have no one to defend them. If you are Catholic you are called to defend your priests now. Accept no model of "newchurch" that has anyone other than a priest pastoring to you. Offer words of encouragement and support to your priests, as well as your prayers and your fasting. Storm Heaven with your prayers and fasting now to stop the decimation of the faith in our diocese.