THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO RESEMBLENCE BETWEEN THE “CHURCH” THAT EXISTED IN CHRIST’S DAY, AND JUST AFTERWARDS, AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH OF TODAY.
One of the Reformers expressed this when he said: “What Christ preached was a kingdom. What we got was a church”.
During His 40 days on the desert Satan appeared to Jesus and promised him power and weath if he worshipped him. Of course, Jesus refused.
But within 400 years Jesus’ followers had taken Satan’s deal and sold their souls for power wealth and position.
Jesus was a humble carpenter. Within a few short years his followers had become emperors.
One of the most painful things that all Catholics are experiencing today is seeing the amount of evil in the church – child sexual abuse, other forms of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of money and possessions.
This evil primarily exists among the hierarchy and clergy. Terrible things are happening and being tolerated from the level of the pope down to the humblest of curates.
The hierarchy and clerics tell us, they would, why wouldn’t they, that the church is at once beautiful and terrible, good and evil. The use the parable of the wheat and the chaff growing together until harvest time.
In reality, all this means is that they are continuing to tell us to: “pray up, pay up and shut up”.
Even the most twisted and ignorant interpretation of Jesus person and mission could not say that Jesus wants us to tolerate evil and leave it grow beside good until God’s day of judgement.
The Christian imperative is to challenge evil and injustice anywhere it exists. A Christian cannot sit quietly and watch evil being done. He / she must spring into actions against all injustice and evil.
Any yet Catholic bishops, priests, religious and laity sit back and do not challenge the worst of evils in their own church.
And it’s not just enough to say “I concentrate on my own parish and make it as best I can”.
A deaf child being abused in Argentina is the personal business of the bishop, parish priest and laity of Ballydehob.
Any support we give, be it financial or otherwise, to an abusing church is literally co-abuse!
The current paralyzing corruption in the RC hierarchy and clergy, becomes our own personal sin, if we support that hierarchy or clergy.
A penny given to Peter’s Pence is a penny towards child abuse and cover up.
Your envelope going into the plate in Ballydehob parish is a donation towards child abuse and cover up.
“All that is necessary for evil to thrive is that good people do nothing”.
“All that is necessary for hierarchical and clerical abuse to survive is for the laity to fill hierarchical and clerical pockets”.
If you really want to send the abusers and cover uppers a message:
Stay away from their buildings.
Stop giving them money.
Stop swallowing their message that good and evil must grow side by side until Judgement Day.
Stop clerics on the street, in supermarkets in banks, in restaurants, and tell them: “Not in my name. Not in Jesus’ name”.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 