Tag Archives: Priests

PRIESTLY VOCATION: WHAT IT IS & IS NOT

WHAT A PRIESTLY VOCATION IS NOT:

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a bishop, so I’ll join the seminary to get started on my career.”

This is no straw man. I know many like this. Zero faith. Nothing to do with Jesus. One spoke it out loud throughout the seminary, and soon after ordination to the priesthood he was made a bishop. He had “friends.” Or is it some sort of “mafia”? Another with the same attitude, thinking to be untouchable in his overconfidence in himself, was “laicized” on his way to being a bishop, monster that he was and is.

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a priest because, like, you know, you get to have the power of having the laity have fake power, like having the laity preach at Mass, and give out the ‘wine’ at Mass, and like in pastórial ministry, never doing anything by way of clericalizing the laity and having them do fake anointings like pretending to do Last Rites or even hearing Confessions. I’ll get to do nothing and they’ll all think I’m a hero. What a cushy life!”

This is no straw man. I’m thinking of one seminarian in particular. He made his choice to follow his heroes in the priesthood, those priests who were diametrically opposed to good doctrine, good morals, good instruction in the spiritual life, reverent liturgy. He verbosely, loudly, made it clear that he had friends and was protected and had a good career ahead of himself. Nothing and no one was going to stop him from ladder climbing. That consumed him. Too sad. None of these people have a single thought for Jesus, that a vocation is a call coming from Jesus.

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a priest because I for sure have a vocation to be politically correct in the seminary where you learn to be politically correct with the bishop. I know how to be a ‘yes man’ first time, every time. I’ve already compromised myself in the parishes I’ve been in as a seminarian and young priest. I’ve already lost my virginity… um… you know what I mean… Hahaha…”

This is no straw man. I know plenty of seminarians and young priests who are expert at not thinking, who have so learned to compromise themselves being ‘men of consensus’ with bishops and presbyterates that they cannot have a discussion about good doctrine, good morality, good instruction on the spiritual life, reverent liturgy, but immediately shut down, eyes glazed over, stone faced, but who are ever so ambiguously clever in stock phraseology, whether it fits the would-be conversation or not, about how it is that the bishops or priests have an “approach” or “posture” and that that is what they are following. Notice that this isn’t about following Jesus.

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a priest because I don’t feel like I’d like to be married and have a family.”

This is no straw man. This is a sickness. Everyone is called to be married as this is the image of God, male-female-marriage-family, as we read in Genesis. And this is how Jesus redeemed us, with His own recitation of marriage vows with His Bride the Church at the consecrations at the Last Supper united with Calvary, “My body given for you in Sacrifice” and “My blood poured out for you in Sacrifice.” Priests are married by the Holy Sacrifice they offer, reciting those vows in the first person singular, in Persona Christi. Other single people, religious or secular, fulfill this image of God united with Jesus. But the guy who goes into the priesthood not understanding that this is a vocation to be married to the Church is a walking disaster, a freak show, who is literally a danger to himself and others. Abandoning Jesus and misunderstanding His Sacrifice is what brings about the abuse of the Little Flock. Yep.

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a priest because I like doing holy stuff because it makes me look good to myself.”

And Jesus will say: “I never knew you. Get away from me you evildoers” (Matthew 7:23). Doing holy stuff doesn’t justify. God justifies. “But I absolved sin in your name! I consecrated your body and blood in your name!” Nope. That doesn’t count. Only God’s grace counts. Jesus doesn’t call someone to be a priest to do stuff. The priest might do things, but Jesus can raise up stones to be priests. The guy who simply enjoys doing nice stuff is all about being self-referential, a narcissist, perhaps a sociopath. This is the most dangerous guy of all. He can rationalize anything. He is diametrically opposed to Jesus even while doing holy things which, in his own mind, are for Jesus.

  • “I feel like I’d like to be a priest because I have a lot of talents to offer and I’m just the one!”

The only talents Jesus is interested in from anyone He calls to the priesthood is His own five wounds. Jesus had all talents much better than all priests put together. He’s interested in priests standing in solidarity with Him in His trials for us, His being in solidarity with us. If it takes getting rid of earthly talents, not using earthly talents, for this end of salvation of souls, that’s what Jesus will do. A priest is to follow the Holy Spirit who goes where He wills in forming priests to be one with the one High Priest, and that always involves the wounds of Jesus. Anyone who foists their talents upon the Church is a fraud.


Those are just some random thoughts in the early hours of a Sunday morning before 6:00 AM Holy Hour with Confessions, you know, the holy things of the priesthood, which, mind you, are holy, but that’s not what a vocation from Jesus to the priesthood is all about. I’m typing a million miles an hour and not reading over what I write. Sorry. There is so much more to say about what a vocation is not. But you get the idea. A fake vocation is a not a vocation. A fake vocation mocks the real vocation. Let’s put out some random thoughts on what a real vocation to the priesthood is all about:


WHAT A PRIESTLY VOCATION IS:

  • While the bishop confirms a priestly vocation by calling a man to Holy Orders, that vocation is not in the least from the bishop, but rather from Jesus. Jesus calls. No one else.
  • Jesus calls a man to get his own little hell out of the way of the one High Priest, Christ Jesus, so that Jesus can work through, with and in such a man. We recall the prayer of John Henry Newman (1801-1890): “Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be You shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen.”
  • A priest is called to go to Confession. Then he will offer that sacrament to others. He will know exactly why he is a priest, so that we might all be in humble thanksgiving to Jesus in heaven.
  • That’s about it. Everything else is contingent on God’s providence. Including offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. A priest is called by Jesus to suffer with Jesus. For instance, say a newly ordained priest, having received his faculties for Confession at the end of the Ordination Mass (a quite common practice) is walking from the church to the reception at whatever social hall minutes after his ordination and he’s accosted between the two buildings by an apparently enthusiastically devout penitent wanting to be the first confession that the new priest will hear. The new priest obliges. But then the “penitent” runs to the bishop and is publicly accused of solicitation of sin during Sacramental Confession. The bishop then suspends the priest from active ministry and starts the preliminaries for laicization. It just means that the priest was called by Jesus to be in solidarity with Jesus in Jesus’ trials more fiercely, more quickly than other priests. And if that priest perseveres, Jesus will say to him: ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 5:34). The priest and Jesus will know each other very well. Brotherhood in blood.
  • There are, of course, many more things to say, but allow me just one more, the most important for a priest to be close to Jesus, to answer Jesus’ call. If we are truly close to Jesus in His trials, we will know what hurt Him the most during His passion and death for us and it’s not the betrayal of some Judas-priest. What hurt Jesus the most was that His dear Immaculate Mother had to see Him tortured to death. A priest that Jesus calls is called to be in solidarity with Jesus in this greatest of His trials. It is for this that He sweat blood in His agony in the garden of Gethsemane. It is for this that there was that dichotomy, if you will, between the will of His human nature and that of the Father. He did not want His Immaculate Mother to suffer so terribly. But then: “Not my will, but Thine be done.” That’s the vocation of a priest. And should the priest have a chance to offer Holy Mass, absolve sin, send people to heaven, great! But the priest’s prayer absolutely, in view of the suffering of dearest Mary, must be with one voice with Jesus, una voce, through, with and in Jesus: “Abba! Father!”

2 Comments

Filed under Priesthood, Priestly Celibacy, Vocations

Caiaphas, Bishops, Priests: vaccine moralism murdering God’s image

Pretty much all bishops and priests in this fallen world hold as “precious” the indignant reaction of the little flock of Jesus over against being told that they are to kill the image of God in the womb so as to protect the most venerable among us: “Get the vaccine! You stupid people! You must kill babies in the womb to get vaccines! Feel the POWER! Get yours! You know nothing! Don’t you know that it is better to kill babies in the womb than that the whole world perish?!”

  • “So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”

To crucify the Son of the Living God is the most horrific sin the entire universe has ever witnessed. Jesus is God, our Creator, the Creator of all there is, including time. Jesus holds all of time in His hands, all at once. But some say:

  • “We live today and so we are innocent of that Man’s Blood. We are distanced from that Man’s Blood. We are better than those damned Jews of the past. They crucified Jesus, not us! Time is malleable, surreal. We can manipulate time! Jesus said that His time on the cross was His hour. And it is. But that’s it. One damned Hour. And now it’s over, and we are free from that Hour.”
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is salvador-dali-persistence-of-time.png

There are those who think that if we only only take those hands of His, those hands cupping within them His creation of time like so much blood and water, nailing one hand in one direction to one side and the other hand in the other direction to the other side, that time like so much blood and water will drop from those hands of His so that He will not be able to reach through time so as to judge us. But no, Jesus draws all to Himself in that one Hour, either to give us the privilege of being crucified with Him in the greatest manifestation of love this universe has ever known, or to judge us. But He will draw all to Himself across time into that one Hour as He is lifted up from the earth on the cross for our redemption and, please God, our salvation. We cannot so easily escape by holding that we are aloof. We are always before Him. Our sin is always before Him. To Him comes with its burden of sin all mankind. But if we insist that any such redemption and salvation is only in the past, because we are now “distanced” from Caiaphas’ sin so that we have no part in it at all, ever, then we also distance ourselves from any possibility of forgiveness from that Cross when Jesus, having obeyed the Father unto death, now commands the Father: “Father! Forgive them!” We claim we are not sinners, giving ourselves a license to kill, if we say that we are absolutely “distanced” from the sin of Caiaphas.

Bishops and priests who do this have the pretense that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is only an historical meal with no significance for us today, the pretense that there is no sin and therefore no forgiveness of sin, no divinity of Christ, that the only think important is to murder the image of God in the womb. It’s always the same in every culture in every time and place since Adam’s sin: “There but for the grace of God go I, all of us.”

Imagine that, bishops and priests who think the Mass is not a Holy Sacrifice. It’s because they are in one accord of heart and mind with the murderous High Priest Caiaphas, who complains with all self-entitlement so fierce that he thinks his own momentary self-preservation is a rationalization for the murder of Jesus. And so are all who rationalize the murder of the image of God in the womb for self-aggrandizement. They are hypocrites, the worst of all. Jesus said: “What you have done to the least of these you have done to me.”

But those who refuse vaccines developed with or tested on babies murdered for the purpose have a prayer:

  • Psalm 94 — LORD, avenging God, avenging God, shine forth! Rise up, judge of the earth; give the proud what they deserve. How long, LORD, shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked glory? How long will they mouth haughty speeches, go on boasting, all these evildoers? They crush your people, LORD, torment your very own. They kill the widow and alien; the fatherless they murder. They say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob takes no notice.” Understand, you stupid people! You fools, when will you be wise? Does the one who shaped the ear not hear? The one who formed the eye not see? Does the one who guides nations not rebuke? The one who teaches humans not have knowledge? The LORD does know human plans; they are only puffs of air.

But don’t think I’m virtue signaling here. I am Caiaphas if I am without the grace of God. Without the grace of God I am the worst of hypocrites, the most entitled, murderous. I thank God who saves such a wretched man as myself. And that honesty gives me the right to accuse Caiaphas and his present day death minions of virtue signaling:

  • “Father George, you don’t understand! We are virtuous. We get the vaccine not only to save our own lives, but we are also concerned for the elderly comorbidity people. We are good and kind and nice! And you, Father George, you are an old meanie, a murderer who needs to be marginalized, deposed, cast beyond the darkest of existential peripheries. Father George, you are bad and evil.”

But to these virtue signalers I have some questions:

  • Do you yourselves go and buy groceries and go on errands for the elderly co-morbidity people? No?
  • Are you not the most damned hypocrites, spitting on the image of God and proclaiming your virtue as bishops and priests, you know, glorious in virtue signaling like the high priest Caiaphas?

Thus begins Tuesday of Holy Week, 2021, for this back-ridge Appalachian priest.

P.S. I remember listening to “Keep the Faith” cassette tapes waaaay back in the day, like in the 1980s. There was a conference given on moral theology by Msgr William Smith who was at the time teaching at Dunwoody, the major seminary for the Archdiocese of New York. He has many quotable quotes, none of which I can remember verbatim, but I think I recall correctly his mockery of those liberal bishops and priests who claim with all condescending gnostic authority from one high that church teaching on life is PRECIOUS, but since we are mature people we can decide for ourselves that which is good for us, and, really, who gives a damn what some precious God, some precious Scriptures, some precious Tradition, and whatever ever so precious constant teachings of the Magisterium of the Church have to present to us as sure and certain doctrine and morality: we are arbiters of the truth because we live today and we are therefore today better than anyone in the past, especially that out-of-date Jesus, those out-of-date Apostles, those out-of-date Scriptures with their out-of-date Tradition, all of which makes any Magisterium commenting on that which is out-of-date to be out-of-date itself. And then they scream with God-is-dead Nietzsche that they are sole arbiters of that which is a WILL TO POWER!

Did I mention that High Priest, as in the High Priest Caiaphas, comes from the Greek ἀρχιερεὺς or “Arch-Priest”? The “Arch” bit refers to origin and derivatively to ruler itself derivatively from POWER. The High Priest is the Power Priest.

In all his glory, if he thirsts for power, any bishop or priest, however high and mighty in his own eyes, is merely playing the Gollum: “My Precious! Power! Mine! All mine! My Precious! Power to kill the image of God! My precious!”

Oh, and don’t worry, I’m trying to hunt down my commentary on the 1990s appendix to the medical ethics ever revised document of the USCCB, an appendix which cleverly turned all morality upside-down, inside-out, back to front, having it that all that which is cooperation in evil, such as formal and proximate cooperation, is merely material and remote cooperation, with the latter being not immoral at all. In other words, do whatever you want, like abortions in Catholic hospitals, and it’s all O.K. I remember that the new ethics director for the Catholic Hospitals within the Archdiocese of New York, in a first press-conference, said that abortions in Catholic Hospitals are good to go, you know, because abortion is an outpatient procedure, which means that the hospital has nothing to do with it. !!! But if the girl stays overnight in the hospital, then, yeah, precious feelings of some overly devout people might have to be considered.

Anyway, I handed my commentary over to friends in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which brought it to the Holy Father, who commanded that the USCCB be directed to retract that appendix, condemning the appendix and all those bishops who followed the bad advice of that appendix, to the end that they had to reverse all the decisions they made with that appendix. Great. That’s about never happened before. But meanwhile, people died because of that appendix.

And now that appendix has been revived, meaning that pretty much all bishops and priests cleverly turn all morality upside-down, inside-out, back to front, having it that all that which is cooperation in evil, such as formal and proximate cooperation, is merely material and remote cooperation, with the latter being not immoral at all. In other words, do whatever you want, like developing and testing vaccines with babies who are purpose-aborted and it’s all moral and good.

Dear Caiaphas: it’s not all moral and good. Time will catch up with you from the cross, and then what are you going to do in eternity? Just asking.

7 Comments

Filed under Coronavirus

Police chaplains? Priests? Why?

  1. Here’s what some people think:

2. Here’s what some others think:

How to discuss guns with a liberal awesome short humorous video… Ha ha ha.

3. Recall this post:

Active Shooter! The Coming Storm (FBI: Train Now!)

If you read that, you would know that in some places, police chaplains are taken very seriously and are trained up by the FBI. That includes Catholic priests. Part of the training is gun training. You get familiar with the people and the tools they use. Good people. Good fun. Of course, it’s serious, but it’s also a good time. Here are some pictures from a training session in Charlotte:

FBI CITIZENS ACADEMY 2

The DOJ’s FBI SWAT demonstrates how to melt your gun. Meanwhile, one of the kids along for the day (this is family stuff too you know) demonstrates a ghillie suit:

FBI CITIZENS ACADEMY 3

Another kid puts on some riot gear in back of a riot appropriate vehicle:

FBI CITIZENS ACADEMY 4

Or, I don’t know, tell me… priest’s don’t belong as chaplains where people are laying down their lives for others, the greatest love of all. They are only to be at the consecration saying the words of Jesus’ own sacrifice in the first person singular: “This is my…”, but then run away, not risking themselves in service in any way because that might not look nice… Is that it? These are really good people, and we’re just supposed to abandon them?

And then, I’m supposed to say something about priests packing heat. Patience!

1 Comment

Filed under Guns, Priesthood