Warning to Methodists on Gay Marriage

This morning, I had a spiritual inspiration while preparing for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass this morning at St. Louis parish.  The recent news about the United Methodist Church splitting over LGBTQ issues was weighing heavily on my mind.  But before I go into detail…

The latest news about the United Methodist Church can be found here: United Methodist Church Announces Proposal to Split Over Gay Marriage. Essentially, they propose to send traditionalists packing with $25 million to form a new Christian denomination. [Perhaps the Catholic Church will admit them as a new ordinariate – speculation on my part.] This means that the United Methodist Church will have formally become corrupted.

UMC Logo with Gay Theme

I personally feel compassion for persons who have decided to submit to living a gay lifestyle or who chronically suffer from same-sex attraction, and the Catholic Church formally welcomes and prays for these who struggle to master these challenges.  I am not a homophobic person.   Love the sinner; hate the sin.  I’m a sinner, and I love me, too.

So what happened at Mass?  What happened was, during my initial prayers after I arrived the pew in the parish, I noticed a Bible in the hymnal rack.  I grabbed the Bible and asked the Lord, “Lord, guide my hands to turn to the page which you select for me to read, that I might know your message for me today.”  In doing so, I opened it immediately and directly to the 2nd Letter of Peter, Chapter 2.  It was in part about sexual licentiousness and the punishment due those who lead people into this error!  It mentions Sodom and Gomorrah!  I was amazed!  Here’s what it says :

False Prophets and Their Punishment

2 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers^[a] the way of truth will be maligned. ³ And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell^[b] and committed them to chains^[c] of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment; ⁵ and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; ⁶ and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction^[d] and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{[e] 7} and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless ⁸ (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment ¹⁰ —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^{[f] 11} whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment from the Lord.^{[g] 12} These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and when those creatures are destroyed,^[h] they also will be destroyed, ¹³ suffering^[i] the penalty for doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation^[j] while they feast with you. ¹⁴ They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! ¹⁵ They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor,^[k] who loved the wages of doing wrong, ¹⁶ but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷ These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved. ¹⁸ For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious desires of the flesh they entice people who have just^[l] escaped from those who live in error. ¹⁹ They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them. ²⁰ For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. ²¹ For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. ²² It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

“The dog turns back to its own vomit,”

and,

“The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.”

 

[Source:  2nd Letter of St. Peter, 2:1-22, NRSVCE Bible]

In faith, this was a VERY CLEAR message about where the Lord sits on this issue.  He is not with the LGBTQ plan.  He loves everyone, but everyone has a choice to make.  When Christianity, above all, preaches the existence of temptation, the wrong choice of sin, repentance for sins, healing from the injuries of sinful choices, growing in holiness and closeness to and love for God in this life and then eternal salvation for those who love and serve God, then a choice which is expressly counter to Divine Revelation and Natural Law is a seriously selfish and potentially spiritually deadly choice.  I do not wish any of my gay brothers and sisters to be misled and chained down by the weight of their sins forever.

While the State can provide a license of marriage to a gay couple (e.g., for the sake of giving politically demanding, enamored, monogamous homosexual couples property rights which a validly married couple would have under the law and allowing the use of the term “marriage” for simple administrative convenience), there can be no same-sex Holy Matrimony in a valid Christian setting.  God has already defined human marriage in Natural Law and in Divine Revelation.  Jesus the Lord has expressed this clearly in Sacred Scripture.  There can be no acceptable willful corruption of what God has established to be held.  As well, there can be no person placed in a position of responsibility who secretly intends to undermine Christian doctrine as regards moral sexuality, and that means that a person who is a committed, practicing LGBTQ should not be an ordained pastor in a valid Christian denomination.  In fact, as long as they preach a doctrine opposed to the Lord, they shouldn’t be preaching at all…at least for the good of their own salvation.

Read, understand, and obey Sacred Scripture.  Let no one be offended.  This is a warning for those who are not too learned in the ways of God, and who desire that God be someone who does not recognize sin or value obedience in sexual design.  Everyone naturally has sexual urges, but humans are the only ones who can willfully abuse the treatment of those urges.  Orient them on reproducing beloved life by being a mom and wife or a father and husband.  This is your only chance.

 

 

 

The Lazy Servant Who Squandered Talent

Today, I’m writing about a personal situation which weighs heavily on me, because even when I pray to God in the Rosary, trying to think of Heavenly realities, He will not let me forget it.  He wants me to take action, after His own mind.

One of my parish priests has a problem with accepting responsibility for errors and mistakes which occur in the administration of the Sacraments and normal parish administration.  I have brought four serious concerns to his attention during as many years, and each time he has attempted to deflect responsibility for them, resorting to excuses in order to protect the unmanaged conditions surrounding the errors.  He has failed as a leader on all 4 occasions, being first and foremost concerned about avoiding any requirement to work in order to resolve real issues.  My conclusion?  He has just a little talent, he is selfish, and he is lazy.

His actions are directly reflected in this segment in the Good Lord’s “Parable of the Talents” where he teaches,

The talent shall be taken away from the lazy slave.

Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’  But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?  Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.  So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.  For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ [Matthew 25:24-30]

So, I am taking the talents that the Good Lord gave me to give through him, and I will be giving them through other priests at another parish where the priests, regardless of their talents, are not lazy and are not selfish.  There will my and my wife’s spirituality blossom again in a pure Sanctuary where the servants are diligent and inspired, and in Christ

It’s God’s holy will that I do this, and it is my hope that the lazy slave, this priest, will reflect on what has happened and will seek self-improvement opportunities and will grow in grace and in good works so to avoid the sentence:

‘…As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ [Matthew 25:30]

Evidence of the Church’s Ultimate Trial

St. Paul teaches about the Church’s ultimate trial before the Second Coming in his 2nd Letter to the Thessalonians, Chapter 2. St. Paul writes:

1 As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. 4 He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you? 6 And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his time comes. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness [iniquity] is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, 10 and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, 12 so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches further:

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

EVIDENCE OF DELUSION – SUMORRUM PONTIFICUM, RESIGNATION OF ITS AUTHOR

We see that occurring under the moto proprio, Summorum Pontificum (SP), and the groups of people who, blind already to Jesus in the Eucharist within the God-willed Novus Ordo Mass, seek out the fashions of the Extraordinary Form in order to be nurtured by the form and culture, not by Jesus Christ. It’s very revealing. SP was meant to be a solution for SSPX and their adherents- a cause of unity. However, it is precisely a cause of disunity (and a tax on limited priestly resources) and a complete reversal of the will of God expressed through Vatican II and Sacrosanctum Concilium. Pope Benedict XVI was deluded in this action. He has since been resigned, in good health, by God.

As has been expressed before in another forum, the action called by the moto proprio, SP, if enacted during the time of King Solomon and his successors, would have been like telling the People to vacate the Temple (a unifying structure which drew Jews and Gentiles alike) and move God’s throne back to the primitive Tabernacle of canvas and tent poles with only the twelve tribes on its periphery.

But here’s the catch – the great delusion: God is still in the Temple (His missioned Church according to His wishes as outlined in Vatican II Ecumenical Council), and those who refused to believe in and be satisfied by His Real Presence there, above all else, are now in the old Tabernacle (the Church He set out to reform) in direct violation of God’s wishes as expressed under Vatican II and Sacrosanctum Concilium, worshipping form and scenery and fashion and self-aggrandizing music, but not God; turning inward to the old ways but not blooming outward in a way appealing to the lost sheep and God’s appointed mission.

For, if they believed in God and listened to and adhered to His call to unity and to evangelize the world and make conditions for bringing all back into the Church, they would not have left the Temple in search of “not-God.” If they heard His voice and followed it, they would have embraced Vatican II enthusiastically and with the knowledge that by obeying God’s will, we are loving God as best we can.

When Jesus comes to judge, who will he condemn? Those who have faith and a spirit of obedience or those who have doubt and a spirit of disobedience?

WHAT IS GOING ON? THE US CHURCH APPEARS TO HAVE FRACTURED FROM WITHIN

The Catholic Church in the USA has divided itself into 3 social classes.

From my single parish perspective, the Catholic Church in the USA appears to have divided itself into three social classes, all of which are opposed to each other:  1) The Traditional Latin Rite Mass party (ultra-conservative and outwardly pious); 2) The Mainstream Novus Ordo Mass party (moderate, obedient and humble); 3) The Folk Novus Ordo Mass party (casual, believe what you want, it’s about me).

Specifically, I have noticed, in a single United States parish, that there are at least these three different cultures which are identified by the clothing people wear and the music they use.  I have also noticed, between the Extraordinary form and Novus Ordo form of the Mass,  a break in the integrity of the roles of the ministerial priesthood (of the ordained Priest alone) and common priesthood of the baptized Faithful in worship:

1) Traditional Latin Mass goers: Standard for men is coat and tie; ladies wear long dresses and white or black veils; children are similarly dressed. The well-dressed, by their attire and implied stance, bring judgment on everyone else who do not comply with this standard. Also, there is a break in the integrity of the Vatican II “participatio actuosa” mandate in that the people are not allowed to vocally pray, for example, the Our Father. If a person does, the person is violating the sacred right of the priest alone. Also, if you do not kneel at the altar rail and receive Holy Communion on the tongue, you don’t (at least, it will greatly offend if you don’t follow the TLM rule). The faithful are barred, by the communion rail, from entering the Sanctuary.

2) Mainstream Novus Ordo Mass: Clothing standard is modest, business casual attire; only lectors and EMs are required to wear semi-formal attire; music is based on the organ. Again, those wearing semi-formal attire in the pews bring judgment on those who do not, or they set themselves apart. Here, the Faithful are expected to actively engage in some of the prayers or chants which, in the Traditional Latin Rite, they must not. If one does not pray the Our Father vocally, for example, the person is not participating as a member of the “common priesthood of the Faithful.” The faithful are instructed NOT to kneel at the altar (as the norm) and they should receive Holy Communion on the tongue, while standing, but are instructed that they may receive on the hand as well. The Faithful are invited into the Sanctuary. “All are welcome”

3) Contemporary Novus Ordo Mass: Most wear casual attire (or even a lower standard like shorts and flip flops or tee shirts); the music is usually folk guitar and fairly bland (in my opinion). This Mass, while following the Novus Ordo, looks and feels like an Evangelical gathering. There is no judgment going on here. “Everyone is equal” is sort of the mindset.

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?  WHO ARE WE?  WHAT ARE WE DOING?  WHAT ARE OUR VALUES?  WHAT IS OUR RELIGIOUS CULTURE?!  I am saddened by the class system which we seem to have allowed to grow unchecked and also by what seems to be a loss of integrity and movement away from the direction which the Holy Spirit set for us during Vatican II ecumenical council.  What are we doing?