First of all, I want to thank all of you priests, deacons and seminarians who signed on to this mailing list. It is very encouraging to see the humility and willingness to gain knowledge that will help you in your service to God's people. If this seems a strange statement, let me tell you that in the first 48 hours that this site was up we received emails from about 130 priests demanding to be removed from the mailing list. Some were quite nasty. Some took offense that someone sent in their email as though it were a personal affront.
It is no secret that orthodox priests who think with the Church often receive cold shoulders and outright hostility from their brother priests. Those who don't go along with the "CYA club" or the clerical mafia and preach Christ instead of the status quo, thus rocking the boat, soon know they are persona non grata. All too often a faithful priest who makes a mistake is much more likely to be called on the carpet and chewed out much more severely by the bishop than a dissident cleric whose errors are deliberate and treated with kid gloves.
A priest friend of mine, ordained within the last 12 years or so, told me that during his first parish assignment he dutifully preached on contraception, but immediately afterwards was "spoken to" by the pastor. The pastor ordered him "not to do that again," and muttered, "just watch the collection receipts go down."
Huh?
If this is what we are about, then we are no better than a governmental bureaucracy that self-perpetuates after having lost its purpose for existing. I should add that the pastor was not a wild-eyed radical or dissenter, but one of the stalwarts of the diocese, the type to whom bishops like to send the newly ordained to learn the ropes. He was the type that another priest friend of mine referred to as "a company man." In frustration he cried out to me, "John, they're company men!" By the company, he was not referring to the Magisterium, but the local diocesan system. They knew how to play the game, advance their careers, manipulate or get around the bishop when necessary, and keep their own backsides covered.
The Gospel? What Gospel?
If they only knew the true danger their backsides were in.
Christ didn't land on the Cross by playing it safe with the high priests of His day. In view of the corrupt system outlined above, when people ask about the sex abuse crisis, "How could this have happened?" the only answer is, "How could it not have happened?" when whistle-blowers were punished and abusers honored or at least coddled. The only response is "Thank God it happened!" Not thank God children were abused, but thank God the corrupt system that allowed it to continue was blown sky high. It is only the beginning, but it may well be the deliverance so many of us have been praying for. Recalling the famous vision of Pope Leo XIII where he saw God grant Satan's request of 100 years to destroy the Church, and chose the 20th century, was it an accident that this particular stronghold collapsed two years into the 21st century? Judgment begins with the House of God (1 Peter 4:17). Thank God. What does this all have to do with contraception? Contraception was the epicenter of the "sexual revolution." Contraception was also the epicenter of the movement for dissent against Church teaching, Humanae Vitae in particular, and the center of most of the fiercest battles in the Church today.
Contraception, abortion and homosexuality are the three legs of the stool upon which the Culture of Death sits. (We will have more on the contraception/homosexuality link in a future column.)
Thank God for you priests in our midst who know the Gospel has always been preached at personal risk and that Humanae Vitae is part of that Gospel and an expression of God's love and protection for His people.