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“And why did Christ not take any women for Apostles?
And why did He call God the Father? Well, if these facts pain you,
then consider it your cross and bear it. Take that cross you wear around
your neck like a piece of jewelry and start carrying it. If you believe that
Christ is God—and if you don’t then you are self-deceived in calling
yourself a Christian—then you must believe He did and said these things
for a reason..”
Yes, I believe He said and did these things for a reason: He lived 2,000
years ago as a human male in a pre-conventional society. There is room for
Him to have made a few mistakes that no longer apply to unfolding evolutionary
human reality today and still be Who He Is—THAT close every moment,
He is with us always.
I’ve read enough now to know that you are too smart for your own
good—and use “of course” often enough to betray your own fears
and defenses. (Thus the complaints about your authoritative punitive tone
here utterly lacking in the humility and patience you preach. Be careful.)
You might want to learn how to use all that intelligence against your own
certainties.
You do understand a lot, yet you do not yet know enough to know that you
know nothing—or understand that those who know do don’t talk so
much.
Who on earth is giving you the imprimatur for this site? And, if no one,
where are your disclaimers and justifications for such authoritative religious
and mystical teaching?
Not bad, but more than a little scary—something is wrong with this picture.
Without knowing you or much more about you, not much more can be said in
an anonymous comment. All the signs are there, however, that you have a shadow
as long and deep as the Church itself. (And, I am, as they say, a “cradle
Catholic.”)
By the way, if He had been free to choose women as apostles, it’s unlikely
the “infallible” Church would have been harboring male target
pedophiles for centuries—protecting them over children—(What would
Jesus have done, do you think?)—and now facing its own stubborn
disintegration.
Jesus made forgivable mistakes typical to his time and is still Who He Is.
The Church has made unforgivable mistakes and will be hard pressed to evolve
to survive.
You’re smart, but be very careful and take care.
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 edophilia in the Church has its
cause in disobedience, not in the male priesthood
per se, and not in the celibacy of the male
priesthood. The Church has taught for ages that all sexual activity which
is not open to procreation between a man and a woman within the indissoluble
bond of Holy Matrimony and family is a mortal sin, and so anyone who
molests a child flouts the Magisterium of the
Church with disgusting insolence.
The Psychology
of Pedophilia
In its psychological dimension,
pedophilia is really a sort of sexual vampirism in which the adult seeks
to cheat his or her own emotional death by preying on the vitality of young
innocence.
Through my clinical work I have
seen that fantasies related to pedophilia are “fueled” at the core
by feelings of unconscious anger. The pedophile,
embittered for lacking an innocent childhood himself, craves to devour the
helpless innocence of his victim child, and, in devouring it, to defile it. To
his conscious mind, all the pedophile sees is desire,
and he might even interpret this desire as “love,” as the name
pedophilia (from the Greek paidos, a child, and philos,
loving) suggests. But, ironically, in its deep unconscious reality pedophilia
is nothing but envious hatred for the good and the innocent.
Humanistic
Scandal
The number of priests who have
abused children is minuscule—absolutely minuscule—compared to the
number of married men who have abused children. So, given that married men
blatently abuse children, how can anyone rationally equate celibacy
with sexual abuse?
Moreover, the number of priests
who have sexually abused girls is minuscule compared to the number of priests
who have sexually abused boys. Thus, the real problem with pedophilia
lies with sexual perversions that have disgraced human morality through the
ages, as Saint Paul makes clear in Romans 1:24–32.
In fact, just like
those who claim that Christ made a mistake in not
taking women as Apostles, many now claim that Christ and the early Church
made a mistake in teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is open only to those
who live chaste lifestyles. Consequently, we have
before us now the scandals resulting from this
sort of self-indulgent reasoning that justifies nothing but
narcissistic weakness.
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Yes, when you
are obedient I take away your weakness and replace it with My strength. I
am very surprised that souls do not want to make that exchange with
me. |
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—told to St.
Faustina by Jesus
(Diary, 381) |
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The Shadow of
Disobedience
The Church does have a long shadow,
but it’s the shadow of disobedience cast
by both men and women who have fallen into apostasy. We have liberal
priests who stab Christ in the back right at the altar, and we have heretical
bishops who feed their flocks to the wolves. But do you really believe that
feminist teachers in Catholic schools today who attempt to convert vulnerable
young girls to unchaste lifestyles are without blame? Do you really believe
that women who renounce their proper femininity—that is, their place in
their families as modest, humble,
obedient, and courageous defenders of the true Faith
for their children, in imitation of the Blessed Virgin—are
without blame? What would Christ say about that?
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So, yes, it is
easy to find corrupt individuals even within the Church. There have
always been corrupt individuals in the Church, and, until Christ comes
again in glory to judge the living and the dead, there will always be corrupt
individuals in the Church.
But the Church herself is pure; she always has been, and she always will
be. |
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The great mystics (beginning
with Saint Paul himself), quoted throughout this website, spoke in unquestioning
obedience to the divine authority of Scripture and
Tradition. What do those who dissent from the
true Faith have to stand on besides the empty mistakes
of their own humanistic liberalism?
Heretics who claim to be Catholic are legion,
but if they think that sawing off the limb on which they stand can make the
rest of the tree fall over, they are in for a very, very big
surprise.
Forgiveness
True Christians can
forgive those who, instead of submitting to being
pruned of their own stubbornness, attempt to prune the Church of what isn’t
to their personal liking. Instead of hating them, we can pray that such persons
repent before they hit the
ground.
Even pedophiles who repent sincerely
can be forgiven by God. Moreover, even if they don’t repent, we can
still forgive them.
Furthermore, even you, instead of
blaming God for the sins of your father, can forgive
your own father for the hypocrisy in your
family that wounded you. The real mistake, which you make in taking an
“authoritative punitive tone utterly lacking in humility and
patience,” is the mistake of refusing
forgiveness to others, from the depths of your heart, for their mistakes,
no matter what they have done.
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What about the
sin that cannot be forgiven? Well, when
Jesus said that “blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven”
(cf. Matthew 12:31-32; Mark 3:28-30; Luke 12:10) he spoke to the fact that
attributing to Satan—or to mere human activity—the workings of
the Spirit of God is its own act of denying the
healing and mercy that
Christ brought to us.
Be careful, then, not to attribute to human “mistakes” the divine
actions of Christ. |
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What’s Wrong
with the Picture?
So, what’s wrong with the
picture? People who protest the
Faith, rather than live it with absolute certainty,
are wrong. What a sad picture it is, for it’s
seen everywhere in the world today.
But take heart, because the
true Church, the Church against which even the
gates of the netherworld shall not prevail, the Church that, in her absolute
purity, has always been “outside the picture,” is
praying for you, and for all. You can be absolutely
certain of that.
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