To all those Catholics in North America (and possibly elsewhere) who claim that the Catholic Church is being “destroyed” by the hierarchy and the latter should not be supported under the rationalization of ‘enablement’:
- If you “do not have to attend” Mass on holy days of obligation in protest, because of the personal sins of various members of the hierarchy, you will be committing a mortal sin and severing your relationship with God. “We can keep the faith without them” will not cut it in front of God. A few questions: Do you go to Mass for the hierarchy or for God? Or just to be seen by your peers? Or to be able to boast that “I’m a good Catholic?”
- If you think you “need a Pope” so that you can start attending Mass in your dining room, rather than in church, when the universal Church already has its canonically-elected and validly-reigning Pope, the Vicar of Christ, Pope Francis, know that you are well on the way out of communion with God;
- If you think baptism of desire is going to wipe out your mortal sin of not attending Mass (vide #1), understand the following: baptism of desire, to be valid, is available only to those who have never been formally baptised. If you have already been baptised with the Trinitarian formula (whether Catholic, Christian, Orthodox), baptism of desire is no longer available to you as an option. Any sins, in particular mortal sins, committed after baptism require confession for remission, not another baptism, unless you receive the grace of perfect contrition.
For all those North American, armchair-theologian Catholics who think that by publicly writing and speaking in the way you are about the Catholic Faith and the hierarchy, you are being “good Catholics,” pleasing to God and “preventing others from falling into error,” think again! If you think God enjoys your pejorative labeling and name-calling of even his most fallen priests, about whom you have had no compunction turning them into your everyday sport, think yet again!
God never looks kindly on people who attempt, in one way or another, to persuade others to remain distant from Him and to disobey His laws as handed down by the Church. Jesus Christ gave the keys of the kingdom of Heaven to Peter, not to you. Further, God is a God of Mercy, not solely Justice. This particularly applies:
Judge not, that you may not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why do you see the mote that is in your brother’s eye; and do not see the beam that is in your own eye? Or how do you say to your brother: “Let me cast the mote out of your eye; and behold a beam is in your own eye?” You hypocrite! Cast out first the beam in your own eye and then you shall see to cast out the mote out of your brother’s eye (Mt 7:1-5).
Know this, therefore:
The culpability for the potential (and actual) loss of those souls who wish to return to God, but are dissuaded from doing so by your infamous rhetoric to score cheap, political points and support your prideful egos, will be on none other but your souls. You will also face judgment from Christ when you die in the exact same way that you had no problem – indeed, relished – doling it out to others while still alive, unless there is contrition.
You have been warned.
