Spirit Daily
December 6, 2007
http://spiritdaily.com/churchcrsisdec07.htm
It is going to look like a disaster but in the end the Church will rise.
Count on that. But also count on things looking yet more dismal.
Many will live to see a time when there is going to be spontaneous prayer in the Holy Roman Catholic Church once again — on a large scale (not just tiny prayer pockets).
There is going to be praying like the early Church prayed.
That day will come.
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There is going to be a return to relics. There is going to be more tradition.
There is going to be an end to songs that have made Mass secular.
There is going to be healing; the charisms of Jesus, directly ministered, will resurrect. Count on that also. There will be unknown utterances and the "flames" of the Holy Spirit.
There will be resounding rosaries.
It will happen during this century.
The Church will rise — it will tower.
But before then: a test of faith.
For the Church is still in the midst of a grinding, excruciating purification. That will be followed by persecution.
To wit, in just the past few days:
— A priest who is a Navy chaplain is court-marshaled for sexual abuse — while he had HIV.
— A woman who was sexually abused by seven Roman Catholic priests in Los Angeles (and had a baby by one of them) received a $500,000 settlement, it is revealed.
— Also in L.A.: word that last summer Cardinal Roger Mahony was physically assaulted on a street in the wake of that diocese's huge abuse settlement (of $660 million).
— A Croatian priest is sentenced for gay abuse as a popular Arizona priest who was once featured on TV is ready to go to trial (and despite that is still holding prayer services).
— A priest is linked to both child pornography and a photo showing him holding a rifle in Afghanistan. This too makes the news. Oh, the news!
— In New Hampshire, meanwhile, it turns out that the poor fellow who allegedly held hostages at Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire headquarters had once allegedly been abused by a cleric in Boston archdiocese.
When does it stop?
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Believe it or not, these are only a percentage of the news items we received in the past week.
And yet the Church will rise. It will tower. The day will come.
It is a good purification.
Can you imagine the guts, the faith, it takes, in these times, to be a priest? These days, we can say that good priests (and they're in the majority) are true heroes. They suffer a white martyrdom.
Still, the truth sets us free and the truth is that Satan infiltrated our clergy with homosexuality.
It is not pedophilia. It is that our parishes too often became a safe haven for emotionally troubled men who in that stunted spiritual state preyed on young Catholic males, mostly teenagers.
Let's admit that and purge that.
The crisis has not ended and will not until the full extent of evil is acknowledged (and addressed).
One of the most touching things we heard recently was how at a talk by a Vatican journalist — a talk that focused on abuse — an old priest stood and began to weep as he described the feeling of isolation in a society that now often views someone wearing a collar as a suspect.
Do we realize their loneliness? Are we praying enough for them? Can we imagine remaining celibate for a lifetime and yet being viewed as a potential predator?
They persist — these hero priests — even as movie after movie — The Golden Compass, Noelle — trivialize or vilify the Church or downgrade the priesthood, which Satan so hates.
"Confession is trivialized, celibacy is ridiculed, the Virgin Mary is disrespected, nuns are belittled, last rites are mocked, and priestly vocations are caricatured," noted one Catholic activist of Noelle, a movie that features two laughable priests who are in love with the same woman. "In short, that which is uniquely Catholic is trashed."
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Welcome to the persecution.
It will get worse.
The greatest attacks, of course, the biggest problems, have come from inside the Church — where liberalism, where tolerance toward evil, too often holds sway. Take "Golden Compass": it was favorably reviewed by the reviewer for the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Result: now [right], even though most bishops don't even know about the movie, an advertisement for it includes an "endorsement" from the USCCB!
It is time for our prelates to speak out and stand up. There was the scandal of Communion for transvestites in San Francisco. There are some bishops who would refuse the Host to pro-choicers and some who will not. Meanwhile, homosexuals are still being welcomed into some seminaries — including at least one in Rome.
We can't have this.
Time for a purge. Time even for more action by the Vatican.
Our Church will survive. But what a ride it has been.
Two recent notes from viewers summarize the key issues:
"As the priest was holding up the Eucharist and showing it around the room, I saw a fire glowing within the Eucharist," writes one viewer, Liz Bio, of an alleged happening recently. "It appeared almost transparent. I was not experiencing any miraculous thing nor was I feeling especially spiritual at the time. But there was the Host glowing with a flame burning within. I blinked my eyes hard and nudged my husband asking him about this. He answered saying he didn't know what I was talking about.
"After Mass, I approached the priest elated with what I saw in the Eucharist he held up. He sloughed it off saying it was a reflection of a candle."
Maybe it was just a reflection.
But why do we so quickly toss the supernatural — the potential manifestations of the Holy Spirit (remember the flames) — off?
This happens all the time. In addition to other problems, our priests — too many of them, and especially those with a homosexual proclivity — don't accept the charisms of the Holy Spirit.
That's the mystical aspect — which has been discarded, whether or not every case is an actual miracle. Urgently, we must recover it. Wait for an article on this next week!
"The Roman Catholic Church must figure out what it is doing wrong in the battle for souls, because so many Catholics are leaving the church to join Pentecostal and other evangelical movements, a top Vatican cardinal said," reported the Catholic New Agency last week. "Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Vatican's office for relations with other Christians, told a meeting of the world's cardinals that the church must undergo a 'self-critical pastoral examination of conscience' to confront the 'exponential' rise of Pentecostal movements."
How true. How urgent.
As far as the other issue:
"Your article today about the Church not being destroyed is so very timely," wrote another viewer — to give you just an example of the kind of e-mail we receive.
"We have a scandal brewing at our church community in [a certain city] in California. It has just come out that our new pastor, who will start his duties January 1, was arrested in 1999 for lewd behavior. The charges were dropped, he went to counseling and has presumably behaved and now has been given the pastor ship of a very large Catholic community of two churches. Needless to say, this is causing division and hurt. Some people are angry and have left the Church, but most of us are frustrated with the lack of communication, especially in light of past scandals and the Church authorities handling of them."
Let the chips fall where they may.
They are still falling.
It is a tough and yet exciting time.
In Australia, seven hundred gathered last week to promote the idea of married priests — and clashed with twenty who waved placards against it.
Do we need such clashes? Celibacy should be kept. It is extremely valuable. It had tremendous power to a priest. It is like a continual fast.
Rome is right to maintain a hard line on it.
But it must purge the homosexuals. Period. Stop admitting feminine men to the seminaries. If priests are breaking the vow of celibacy, and especially in a homosexual manner, and especially with youth, we would be better off with married priests.
But do we really have to come to that? Is it really coming to that?
We don't think so. It doesn't have to happen. Good, dynamic, and conservative Catholicism will provide all the celibate heterosexual vocations we need.
But we must feed these men the faith. We must feed them the miraculous. Look at how an entire village was recently converted not through dialogue, not through diplomacy — but because it witnessed miracles at the hands of St. Padre Pio!
Let him be the model of a priest.
Invoke the Holy Spirit.
Pray as Jesus did.
Do what He told us to do: Cast out spirits.
Heal.
This is what the Pentecostals do. But who started it? Catholics!
It is not a matter of imitating Pentecostals.
It's a matter of getting back to the roots of our Church.
Ditch the philosophy.
Use closed parishes as prayer centers.
Light the flames.
Save the statues.
And as for those seminaries:
The only philosopher we need is Jesus.
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