This too is a concern for me regarding clerics. I know too much about some of them ….not just their human fallen nature and sinfulness we all suffer from, but grave, dangerous, serious and intentional harm they are to everyone. They are dangerous to the people and to the church and faith. Many will cause souls to go to hell. Like the one you described Padraig, I believe some are devils or devils are attached to them. I stay as far from them as possible. Like you, I get a sense they know I see them for who they are. Many of them are suspected child abusers, others seem to be bent on destroying the faith…. They get away with their conduct because they are riding on the coat tails of the good and faithful clergy whom we were taught to love, revere and respect. These devils need exposed and removed….the McCarricks of today’s church. They are intentionally trying to destroy lives and our faith and are driving souls to hell. The authorities in the church pay nothing but lip service to this while we lose good clergy because they are the ones that are driven out of our church…not the evil ones. The real fault lies within the hierarchy….this is a silent plague on the church that too many choose to just ignore. Mother Angelica herself, I believe a saint, told us clearly that if this is a problem in your church, leave that parish and drive as many miles as necessary to find a good church. We cannot just do nothing as we watch these vile, evil men….and woman burn down Gods holy house. Mother Angelica would be blowing a gasket over our church today and she’d be right.
We sure do need to pray for them . I pray that the good are not persecuted by the hierarchy or the corrupt ones and I pray that the bad ones get out of Gods house. If these problems aren’t corrected, good men will either not accept a vocation into the priesthood and the bad ones will take it over completely until God Himself corrects this….because He will not let the gates of hell prevail against it.
I got the sense with Mother Angelica as I listened to her talks and even watched the way she dressed with her habit , that she was on a journey with us all of this. Getting her eyes open , as we all are. We all of us tend to be more than a bit innocent of what and who we are really dealing with. I am afraid these days we are sometimes dealing with people who are truly, truly deep dyed evil. I get the sense listening to Raymond Arroyo these days (who was after all her Spiritual Child ) that she taught him very well what was coming. That Hell's Doors had sprung wide open, so to speak.
I think it's important to be aware of it these days. Some of the Clergy we might have to deal with are really incarnate demons and to treat them with very,very great caution indeed. These are very,very dangerous individuals indeed. They mean nothing at all but the very,very gravest harm to the souls they come into contact with.
I actually couldn’t bear to see the full truth of how bad it may be. What I’m seeing is too much already. I saw many of the church child abuse issues very early in life and watched it grow unabated throughout my life. Lip service…that’s all we got unless a layperson pushed a case through legally. I know of cases yet today where they are literally paying off victims for their silence… Please take off your blinders and understand that these crimes have had some recent years of exposure because laypeople have come forward to expose these crimes, yet it is still a prevalent problem in the church. I pity good priest because they suffer much because of the sins of the “ fathers”.
I would love to have a good sit down talk with a Church Exorcist about bad clergy. I am sure they could tell me a few shocking stories. Fr Hardon told a few in his day. One of the things he mentioned is that real Satanists are usually run by large groups of Fallen Priests.
I’d be afraid to know how much a exorcist knows… I know too much as it is. It is important to know that we need to be aware of these things so as not to be led or conned by those still in Gods church….by their very existence, they have and continue to lead unsuspecting souls to hell….and that’s the truth. I also know that in Gods time, their time will be up…hopefully soon! God wins and justice will prevail.
I think these two good men recognize how many feel…and I agree. I’ll never lose hope that the church will be triumphant because God will never, ever allow otherwise. God will never forsake us. Jesus on the cross last few words demonstrated that He knew how we might feel when He asked, “ Oh why have you forsaken Me.”….and then we see the resurrection and the birth of His church.
I remember in the 90s when Mother Angelicia was the only one to call out the actions and decisions of Cardinal Bernardin and another bishop. Can remember the exact specific's.. think it was when she took calls on live TV and it had to do with Cardinal Bernardin placing or approving a girl/woman playing as Christ in some event and some else scandal at the time. My memory isn't what it use to be. But I remember thinking at the time.. wow. Here is a nun/mother superior calling out a Cardinal and bishop on cable TV. Turns out she was right about the Cardinal and bishop as both were implicated in the priest abuse scandals years later.
This is where having a good relationship, a good ongoing prayer devotion to our Guardian Angels comes in. God has placed them there to protect us, but what can they do if we just aren't listening? Or worse made deaf, forcing our angels to turn their faces from us because we are steeped in deepest sin? Often when I hear of disasters and shootings I wonder if many of those who died might well have been saved if only they had been switched on with a good relationship with their Guardian Angel. Exodus 23:20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared for you.
I strongly suspect that Mother Angelica did what St Catherine of Sienna did and offered herself up as a sacrifice for the Church and that her sacrifice was taken up on by God.
Report: 1 in 5 Irish Priests and Brothers Have Died in the Past Three Years The newspaper said that “the figures from the directories are likely to be conservative, because not every religious order or diocese reports the death of its clergy to Veritas,” the publisher of the directories. https://www.ncregister.com/cna/repo...nd-brothers-have-died-in-the-past-three-years Yes, the primary reason, surely is a decline in vocations, but I do think there are other causes though probably not in the big picture as much. Society changes too. I think once upon a time, many families gave at least one son to the priesthood, likewise, I think how it was in the past saw more women becoming Nuns. A lot of farm girls in the past, things like that. The vocation may have them been more appealing.
I remember one time an old lady told me a story about her brother who joined a Missionary Order and was sent to Africa. Afterwards her mother asked the Superior when she might see her priest/ son again? To which the Superior replied, 'In heaven'. They didn't come back on holidays back then. Tens of thousands of Irish priests and nuns and brothers went all over the world, often to very inhospitable places were they did not live very long. I think there was very considerable heroism in this. Today is the Feast Day of Blessed Peter Donders. A heroic Dutch Missionary.
There is definitely a spiritual battle to be fought and God bless you for taking that part of it on. But to be factually and historically correct, in the 1940s millions of men with weapons were also processed throughout Europe to stand up and fight evil and back it down and without those millions of men who gave their lives for God and Country, we'd all have been under evil's control for decades now. We face that situation today and there is a need for daily prayer, I so admire the cloistered nuns and monks who pray unceasingly, but like in the 1940s, unless we also have men and women to stand up and back down evil, we'll be overrun, no matter how many are on their knees...
Please ,if you have time, watch this episode of EWTN news…especially the end. It’s about a documentary about a newsman in Hong Kong fighting for freedom.
Padraig, you couldn’t possibly know the significance of this picture to me. I found it on the internet years ago just before my sister passed away. She was much like St.Bernadette especially in her humility. Our family upon seeing this was so taken aback by the image of the young woman in the picture…it looked just like my sister. I was so in awe because I knew it was a sign for us that our dear Mary Ann Bernadette was escorted into eternity by her guardian angel. Her life was a complete suffering and I truly believed she did her purgatory on earth. Because of the profound affect it had on me, I had to find the artist and ask him what inspired him to paint this image. This particular artist has a number of beautiful, popular paintings and they are sold worldwide. At the time of my sisters passing, he had just released this one above. So I sent the artist a message and he responded back. He said it was inspired by the song, “ In the Arms of a Angel”. In his thoughtfulness, he sent me a autographed copy of this image and a beautiful message. My sister had no material wealth in life so there was little, but precious small processions she left behind. My elder sister and I opened a little box of MaryAnn’s with odds and ends of no consequence, but then there was this one cassette tape (recorded music at that time for those who aren’t familiar with what a cassette tape is). This tape was the only one we found of Mary Ann’s…. It’s title: In the Arms of a Angel. I’m sure she was.
I actually heard that she did. Her last years she was confined to her bed and suffered….she offered it up. God sure taught the world a lot more than the gospel with the success of EWTN. He showed the world that a simple nun from a broken home and a few hundred dollars could build the largest catholic network that reached around the entire world. The catholic bishops tried to build it, but never succeeded….but Mother Angelina did! God bless her soul!
