Woe to you, hypocrites!

More and more, with what's going on both in the human element of the Church and in the United States government, I'm feeling that we're reaching a turning point in history--past the point of no return--and we're all going to be called to participate.



The people whom Jesus most rebuked in the Gospels were the scribes and Pharisees--not because they were scribes and Pharisees, as if it were bad to be so, but because they were hypocrites.  Hypocrisy is always one of the worst evils, but it's all the worse when it comes from someone who ought to be held to a higher standard, someone who knows the moral Law and is charged with teaching it to others and helping them to follow it--like the scribes and Pharisees.

The clergy of the Catholic Church are the people whom God holds to the highest standard of all: the men called to shepherd us, His sheep.  If they are untrustworthy, how will the laity be able to trust God, who is trust itself?  If they do not repent of this and act on that repentance, how can God do otherwise than to act directly to stop them?



And sexual abuse is a sin that cries out to God for justice, meaning that if man doesn't let God act through him (if man doesn't enact God's justice for the victims), God will do it Himself, and He will not spare those who ought to have let Him work through them.

Just today I read something shocking--to me, because (thank God) I have never been sodomized, neither by my will nor against my will.  I read that sodomy (anal sex) is not only painful, but that it causes bleeding, and involuntary bowel movements requiring adult diapers.  I call that sex abuse, equally so whether the victim wanted it or not, whether the victim is a man or a woman, and irrespective of the victim's age.

The only reason we still (rightly) get morally outraged at pedophilia (so that it takes no courage at all to speak in outrage against it) is because Jesus Christ and His Church taught that it was evil.  It was practiced by pagan Gentiles who thought nothing of it.

And it's precisely because we look to whether the victim "wanted it", rather than to whether God wanted it, that abusers try to deny being abusers at all (both to the world and to themselves) by trying to convince themselves that the victim did want it, and that "therefore" it wasn't abuse at all.  This is a lie: a willing victim is still a victim.

But for clergy, especially high-ranking clergy like former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to be guilty of such is multiply heinous.



Worse still is when those in the know, especially high-ranking clergy who are themselves innocent of such abuse, cover it up by their actions or even by their inactions.  This is cooperation with evil: even if the individual is a completely celibate virgin, he is as guilty of the abuse as if he had committed it himself.

And I would argue that it's even worse to participate in the coverup by attacking the victims, as by accusing them of "calumny".  To be sure, it is a serious charge to accuse someone of such a heinous crime, or a coverup of such--and to be sure, the Devil hates the Church and probably inspires many people to do just that, especially against the most visible and highest-ranking members of the clergy.  Nevertheless, if there is any legitimate possibility (as by two or more people making the same serious charge specifically against the same person), at minimum an investigation is warranted.  And we need to be charitable to everyone involved: both the victims and the clergy.  The desire should be to learn the truth, for God is Truth, and to enact justice for all in merciful love, for God is Love and is always just.

And if the accusation is against high-ranking clergy, such as the Pope or the College of Cardinals, then an investigation is all the more warranted if there is any significant chance of its being true, however slight that chance may be.  If they are innocent, they should welcome an investigation because it will only prove them innocent.



Granted, we must be as charitable as we can be, consistent with the facts as we know them--and matters affecting the whole Church are facts we need to know, and we cannot willfully turn a blind eye to them.  And we don't know what's in a person's heart at all, and all that can be judged is what the person thought, said, and did based on the evidence, and whether these are good or evil.  One need not be knowingly and deliberately malicious to be an unwitting pawn of the Devil.  And even in the case of those poor souls who have knowingly and deliberately given themselves over to the darkness while posing as shepherds of Light, we must love them enough to care what happens to their immortal souls.  A godly rebuke is done out of love, as Our Lord did when He rebuked the scribes and Pharisees.

But for those who genuinely are wolves in shepherd's clothing, Our Lord said it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with millstones tied around their necks than for them to do what they are doing.  If children or childlike adults cannot trust even the highest-ranking members of the Catholic Church, how can they find it easy to trust God Himself, especially since we are all conceived in original sin and so we all fear and distrust God to some degree anyway?  And this is why God will intervene if this goes on long enough without anything being done about it--make no mistake.



And to divert attention away from this to "climate change" fearmongering is distrusting God's promise to Noah (and so by extension distrusting the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ, which fulfills all previous covenants), acting out of step with the Third Commandment to keep the Sabbath (a grave sin), and deflecting attention from a matter that falls under the clergy's jurisdiction to a matter that does not.



I didn't mean to write so much myself, so I'll leave the last word for Our Lord:



"'But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.'"  (Matthew 23:13-15)

"'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.  You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!'"  (Matthew 23:23-24)