Custos Vinetorum

Pope St. Gregory the Great
AD 590 to 604

Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,

Dr. Kurland at the American Catholic blog has a great post entitled:

“They made me a keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.”

He quotes from today's office of readings in the Liturgy of the Hours. That citation - from a homily by Pope St Gregory the Great on the performance of the ministry - while written some 1400 years ago is so appropriate to the condition and state of the Church in these post modern, neo-pagan times:

Let us listen to what the Lord says as he sends the preachers forth: The harvest is great but the labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest. We can speak only with a heavy heart of so few labourers for such a great harvest, for although there are many to hear the good news there are only a few to preach it. Look about you and see how full the world is of priests, yet in God’s harvest a labourer is rarely to be found; for although we have accepted the priestly office, we do not fulfill its demands.

Beloved brothers, consider what has been said: Pray the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest. Pray for us so that we may have the strength to work on your behalf, that our tongue may not grow weary of exhortation, and that after we have accepted the office of preaching, our silence may not condemn us before the just judge. For frequently the preacher’s tongue is bound fast on account of his own wickedness; while on the other hand it sometimes happens that because of the people’s sins, the word of preaching is withdrawn from those who preside over the assembly.

With reference to the wickedness of the preacher, the psalmist says: But God asks the sinner: Why do you recite my commandments? And with reference to the latter, the Lord tells Ezekiel: I will make your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, so that you shall be dumb and unable to reprove them, for they are a rebellious house. He clearly means this: the word of preaching will be taken away from you because as long as this people irritates me by their deeds, they are unworthy to hear the exhortation of truth. It is not easy to know for whose sinfulness the preacher’s word is withheld, but it is indisputable that the shepherd’s silence while often injurious to himself will always harm his flock.

There is something else about the life of the shepherds, dearest brothers, which discourages me greatly. But lest what I claim should seem unjust to anyone, I accuse myself of the very same thing, although I fall into it unwillingly – compelled by the urgency of these barbarous times. I speak of our absorption in external affairs; we accept the duties of office, but by our actions we show that we are attentive to other things. We abandon the ministry of preaching and, in my opinion, are called bishops to our detriment, for we retain the honourable office but fail to practise the virtues proper to it. Those who have been entrusted to us abandon God, and we are silent. They fall into sin, and we do not extend a hand of rebuke.

But how can we who neglect ourselves be able to correct someone else? We are wrapped up in worldly concerns, and the more we devote ourselves to external things, the more insensitive we become in spirit.

For this reason the Church rightfully says about her own feeble members: They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. We are set to guard the vineyards but do not guard our own, for we get involved in irrelevant pursuits and neglect the performance of our ministry.

Feminae in Diaconato, Sacerdotio et Episcopato

Heretic Sarah Mullally

Amici, Americani et Compatriotae,

The Catholic Herald of the UK reports that "London’s traditionalist Anglicans have a woman bishop. What now?" The Wikipedia entry on this person reports that "Dame Sarah Elisabeth Mullally DBE (née Bowser; born 26 March 1962) is a British Anglican bishop and former nurse. From 1999 to 2004, she was Chief Nursing Officer and the NHS director of patient experience for England. Since July 2015, she has been Bishop of Crediton, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Exeter. In December 2017 her nomination as the next Bishop of London was announced." This person has NO theological expertise, NO parish experience, and NO Christian acumen. She is a heretic for even assuming the pretense of ordination and consecration inasmuch as Christ gave and reserved the clerical state to men only in John 20, and in 1st Timothy 2 St. Paul forbade women to have any authority over men, admonishing them to learn in silence. It is infuriating to see these feminists pervert and defy the Gospel with their godless pink pacifist imbecility. They are like a congress of baboons which scatter throughout the rain forest and savanna, destroying whatever is beautiful and life-giving. Since they will NOT repent, it is time for their eradication from the Body of Christ. Back when men had not been feminized into sterility and paralysis, Phinehas in Numbers chapter 25 and Mattathias in 1st Maccabees chapter 2 made clear what had to be done with the practices of paganism.

In his Apostolic Letter Ordination Sacerdotalis, Pope St. John Paul II explains far more masterfully than I can why women can never be either ordained to the diaconate or priesthood, or consecrated to the episcopate. The second paragraph in section 1 of this letter is clear:

"When the question of the ordination of women arose in the Anglican Communion, Pope Paul VI, out of fidelity to his office of safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition, and also with a view to removing a new obstacle placed in the way of Christian unity, reminded Anglicans of the position of the Catholic Church: 'She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church.'"

A women cannot be a Father and forgive or remit sins in the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation any more than a man can be a Nun - a Mother or a Sister. A women cannot act in Persona Christi and confect the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior at the Eucharist any more than a man can conceive and give birth to a child. Men and women are equal in dignity but unequal in function. A man's function is to be Father, Son, and Brother. A woman's function is to be Mother, Daughter and Sister. And the teaching of Sacred Scripture is clear: women are to be SILENT in the Church, for 1st Timothy 2:11-13 states the following:

"Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty."

Therefore, to all you feminists - either emasculated males or androgynized females matter not -EITHER repent of this heresy before the Cross of Jesus Christ OR get out of the Christian Church because by what you do you are NOT authentically Christian. Your weak-kneed, yellow-bellied, effeminate doctrine of diversity of every perversion, inclusivity of every vice, and tolerance of every corruption are a blight, an infection, an infestation which must be exterminated.

Baptismam Nostram Vivamus

Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,

Because I had to work from home today in order to continue to care for my wife's niece who has third degree burns on her thighs due to a hot water accident a week ago last Saturday, I got the opportunity to attend daily Mass at lunchtime at Our Lady of Grace. Today's Scripture readings include:

• Jesus the Great High Priest in Hebrews 5:1-10
• Assurance of Victory for God's Priest King in Psalm 110:1-4
• The Question about Fasting in Mark 2:18-22

Father Kirby as usual gave an excellent homily. He spoke mainly from the first reading in Hebrews, explaining that we who are in the laity are called to be in a sense priest, prophet and king. Now 1st Peter 2:9 does state:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So I understood the concept of the priesthood of believers on the part of the laity versus the priesthood in Holy Orders on the part of ordained πρεσβύτερος in Greek or Sacerdos in Latin. But I had not heard of these roles (i.e., priest, prophet and king) being ascribed to the laity in this fashion. So I did some research and discovered that tt the Our Catholic Faith web site there is an excellent explanation of this entitled, Mission Of The Catholic Laity: Priest, Prophet, And King. I encourage the reader to review this short essay.

Then in his homily Father Kirby focused mainly on the ending verses in today's epistle reading, continuing with his Sunday Mass theme of living out our Baptism in our daily lives:

In the days when he was in the Flesh,
he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverence.
Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

As part of the priesthood of believers, we in the laity have an obligation to imitate Christ before the world. We must pray without ceasing, and persevere even in suffering, living out our Baptism as an example before the world of what Christ did for us. We must offer up to God what happens to us as a thanksgiving of praise to Him and service to our neighbor, hence the old nuns' phrase, "Offer it up!"

But beyond this there is a seriousness with which Catholics - lay person, religious and clerical - engaged in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Now as the reader may already know, I am a believer in Human Rights bestowed by God, not Civil Rights bestowed by Caesar. But that distinction is not the point here. What is the point is this. In the depths of racial strife during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Catholics joined with their Protestant brethren in marching for racial equality across the land. Father Kirby explained that along with black marchers, Catholic priests, nuns and lay persons would be subjected to tear gas and water hoses and all manner of maltreatment. But they marched onward regardless of the consequences that Caesar could bring to bear because that is what our Baptism requires: defending the defenseless, giving voice to the voiceless and advocating for those without an advocate (e.g., the unborn, the elderly, the terminally ill, those on death row, etc.)

There is one other noteworthy thing of which Father Kirby made mention, and which I discussed in a previous post. The term Reverend prefaced the title and name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is more properly called:

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This man was a Christian minister. Society today tries to secularize and "de-Christianitize" him to fit an atheist, humanist agenda. But it is Christianity alone which first recognized (in the face of Rome's libertine paganism and Athens' secularist philosophy) universal human equality in dignity some 2000 years ago when St. Paul wrote in Colossians 3:11:

Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyth′ian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.

To be Christian is to be like Christ who is God's only begotten Son. He is the very God in whose image and likeness we all - black, white, red, yellow, and brown - are created. Without God having created us as Genesis 1 and 2 describe, without Christianity - perhaps even without us living out our Baptism - there is no equality in dignity, no human rights.