The Lewis Crusade

People are wringing their hands over why the majority of Catholics don’t believe in the Eucharist. They blame Communion on the hand. They blame poor catechesis.  They blame people who want the married priesthood restored. (Isn’t that tradition?)

I am about to have surgery I cannot type well but I still feel obliged to post this.  So forgive the roughness.

Take a teen who has been abused by his adopted uncle, a prominent man in the community.  How much does that teen trust ANYTHING that man has to say? Then he finds out more members of the extended family are in on the abuse, or, perhaps worse, KNEW about the abuse but just looked the other way.  He was told if he complained, he would make the family look bad and nobody would want to join them.  More importantly, the uncle and the other family abusers were rich pharmacists and doctors and the only ones who could treat the familial disorder. They had a special patented compound that only he could make and handle and sell.  If he said anything, he could die from not having it.   But he settled for leaving to try a lesser treatment to get away from the deceit and lies and narcissistic abuse.

I think it is the abuse and the not-so-secret double lives of clerics (and wealthier laity) which makes people doubt that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ and doubt that Confession is something necessary.   Much of these double lives took place well before Vatican II. People have known for decades about it but were powerless to do anything. Look up St. Joseph Calasanz or St. Peter Damien.  There is the double life of Judas as well.  Which apostle didn’t know he was up to no good? Read Joseph Sciambra’s modern attempts at dealing with bishops on sexuality teachings. Their manipulation makes it all seem like smoke and mirrors and makes the teachings about the Eucharist and the other sacraments a means of twisted control by dishonest men. They make the sacraments impossible instead of the means of grace. We just lost a priest who was soliciting 18 year old men on Grindr and had previously had an affair with a woman. How did THAT help Catholics in their faith? How can we trust he kept the seal of the Confessional? He was clearly lying to begin with.

I had another priest who openly mocked a dying woman in his homily because she didn’t trust him because of his awful behavior to her and had broken the seal of the Confessional. He also started speaking out in favor of homosexuals being married, which clearly goes against Church teaching.  (The bishop did nothing.) It is awful.

Here is what I posted in a Catholic discussion group. I was told I was impolite.

My rude response:

You didn’t address anything I actually said. I found that very impolite. I said priests who had strong relationships with family were the ones I can trust. This is exactly what I am talking about. People bring up the true problem and then we are accused of being impolite. As if being a good Catholic means having nice manners. The narcissism of the priests I have known has been horrible and caused many to leave. That is the truth. Read BishopAccountability and the sworn testimonies of the abused. My uncle left Spring Hill seminary in the 60s because they were having gay orgies there on a regular basis. I lost a priest who told the bishop our pastor was buying homosexual porn via mail order. This same pastor regularly preached heresy. He got a cushy retirement and the priest who told the bishop was forced into seclusion with no source of income. He had also found out a priest was having an open affair with a married women. The whistleblower was made the scapegoat, not the actual perpetrators. We were told as a parish that Father James Haley was the problem, that he was rude, not Father Daniel Hamilton. How do I explain that to my kids? Our former pastor from 8 years ago here told many people horrid manipulating things behind closed doors and when the bishop was told, he did nothing. This pastor also accused people of being rude. This is reality. There is nothing polite about what has been done and continues to be done. How many times the victims were told they were being rude by not wanting to be alone with these men (and women). If you are a silent observer, go read how Joseph Sciambra has struggled for years to get bishops to address these problems and to no avail. Look at how Mother Angelica tried to do so with EWTN. She was frequently accused of being rude for speaking the truth.

Celibacy has long been a front for homosexuality or a hiding place for men with women and children issues. We refuse to acknowledge it or do anything about it.

There was a reason Jesus chose widowers and married men. The best priests I have had have been widowers or married men, or they are celibate priests who have a strong relationship with their own families–we see their family.  They talk about them. Their wives and children were the reason they were so good in their priesthoods, as they had proven to have matured through those responsibilities. They were called elders for a reason.  If you can’t trust a priest, how can you trust any of the teachings? That is the problem. Has little to do with TLM or Novus Ordo as such.

If you want people to believe, have the entire hierarchy repent, sell all their riches  and give the money to the poor.  Make a vow of poverty a requirement. And if they are frauds using the priesthood for their own selfish desires, remove them at once.

Photo by Michael Morse on Pexels.com

The question isn’t why don’t we have women priests. The question is why aren’t clergy formed to listen to women and generally speaking, think of most of their concerns and requests as their “honey do lists.” I am obviously not meaning sinful or heretical requests. Are priests willing to admit mistakes and apologize?  Do they know their Bride?  Is the Church a bride or a groom?
When we did engaged encounter, our priest told us the question asked before accepting a seminarian was, “Would he make a good husband?” If the answer was no, then he wasn’t admitted.
But are priests trained to listen to women, like Christ did to His Mother and every woman He encountered? Before I met Father Michael and Father Wilson, I would say definitively, no. Many priests were taught clericalism and chauvinism and have no concept of what it’s like to be a husband or what women go through as wives and mothers.
The demeaning of the married priesthood is sacrilegious. Seeing the nastiness spilled about it seems to prove we desperately need them and the high percentage of the clergy who have women issues. The Khouriyas of the East are Godsends. Their husbands intimately know the needs of their wives and children. Their wives support and console them, and yes, set them straight.
I see the Mother Angelica meme going around. Mother Angelica was constantly at odds with “progressive” bishops and priests and said she would blow EWTN sky high before she would let them have it. No woman in the Church today has the power that Mother Angelica had. I don’t think they ever will. Arguably, she is the reason the Church is still going as well as it is in the USA. But it is in spite of many of the clergy, not because of them. Notice she hasn’t been fast-tracked to canonized sainthood.
Maybe we should start Mass with the women saying, “They have no more wine.” The men come in and the women say, “Do whatever He tells you.” Then, the point would be made. Men serve at the women’s requests, just as Christ did. He did not always answer exactly as expected–He usually did a slight correction or test of faith–but He always answered affirmatively. He never turned them away.  The hemorraghing woman had her request answered just by touching His hem.

My husband John C. Hathaway died in October 2018, age 41, and he suffered from a connective tissue disorder called Marfan Syndrome his entire life. He had chronic, excruciating pain, fatigue, asthma, dislocated lenses (wore trifocals), subluxed joints, low muscle tone, and aneurysms in his brain and aorta. In the last months of his life, he developed seizures.

He talks about his suffering on this blog, and how he eventually accepted it as fully walking in the footsteps of Christ.  I do think it is something we as Catholics need to focus on, the redemptive suffering, that He came not to just suffer for us, but with us.  My husband was mocked by some Catholics for not being healed. It really angered him as such thinking gives us a false understanding of Christ’s Love.  

As I have greatly struggled with grieving my husband’s loss and wondering did I do everything I could for him, I contemplated the Holy Family, particularly St. Joseph’s death.  I have seen the focus so much on St Joseph’s death being happy, that we seem to leave out the fact that it was also completely devastating for Mary and I think in some sense, Jesus.

Jesus could have healed Saint Joseph and he could have lived a longer life to be with Mary. St. Joseph literally had the Best Physician, and yet he still suffered and died– a consolation God gave me when I wondered had I done enough.  I believe in His Divine Wisdom, that He allowed his foster father to die, so that He would know that excruciating suffering, along with Mary. Whenever Christ references a widow or an orphan, He is speaking from that personal pain. He also allowed his death, to remind us that being healed in this world is but for a time so we can continue to serve Him–whether He allows us to suffer or be healed has nothing to do with our personal holiness-it is only by dying and rising with Him that we are fully healed.  My husband also loves(d) TS Eliot, and he recorded part of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” The Wounded Surgeon.

https://youtu.be/hr63lWbWpDk

It is a meditation on Good Friday.  My husband recorded this a few days before his sixteen hour surgery to replace his descending aorta, which resulted in a 3 month hospital stay, mainly in cardiac ICU, hooked up to life support. He miraculously lived 5 more years and 6 months and 2 weeks.

Photo by Michael Morse on Pexels.com

“Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.”

We use that line a lot when things are not going as we wished.  

TOTUS: Obama Inc