"Why is the church (sic) facing this priest shortage?" The question is asked by an aggrieved Irish priest, and solemnly reported in the Marists' CathNews NZ.
Ah ... wait on … It's a tough question ... Let me think ...
For starters, how about Masonic scheming and infiltration of the Church, for 200 years? And Communist infiltration of the priesthood since the 1920s?
Above all, the deliberate suppression by many bishops of the traditional (Tridentine) Latin Mass and its supplanting by the Novus Ordo - whose creator, Annibale Bugnini, named as a Mason on the infamous 'Pecorelli List' admitted in his memoirs he'd asked for the TLM to be officially and explicitly abrogated in word and deed. (Bugnini's request was fittingly denied by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1974 as "an odious act in the face of liturgical tradition".)
The culmination of all the foregoing is to be seen in the flowering of mass apostasy in the Church, symbolized by the Vatican bowing and scraping to a pagan idol, Pachamama or 'mother earth', and apologising all over the place for its removal from a Catholic church by a young man acting in the tradition of St Benedict at Montecassino, breaking idols in a pagan temple.
And yet the spokesman for Ireland's Association of Catholic Priests, Fr Tim Hazelwood - who's apparently only just got around to the mournful exercise of counting priestly heads with which the hierarchy in NZ has belaboured the laity for years (as if somehow it's our fault - which of course it is, but not nearly so much ours as theirs) and with dreadful predictability he advocates for aggravating the process which has resulted in "not enough male celibate vocations to keep our parishes alive".
I've got enough Oirish in me to say that we all know not to ask an Irishman for the way to the next village, let alone the way out of the mess the Church in Ireland has arrived at, with a resounding 'yes' in favour of one of the world's most liberal abortion laws, and now an Irish bishop beginning a process for ordaining women priests, after a 'listening process' (shudder, shudder) he initiated in his diocese.
Doesn't it all sound so familiar? The NZ Church's Irish roots are showing, as evidenced by the Marists' CathNews showcasing the ACP - who represent only a third of Ireland's diocesan clergy - with their demands for an end to 'forced celibacy'.
CathNews' sad story of Fr Tim Hazelwood ends thus: 'The warnings for the Catholic Church in Ireland come at a time when hopes have been raised for the future of the Church following the just-finished Amazon synod.
Last week, in a landmark vote by the Vatican, bishops recommended the Pope gives permission for married men in Brazil to become priests.'
It's perhaps as well that my revered first cousin, that holy priest, Brian Quin SM, RIP, is no longer subscribing to CathNewsNZ.
He'd find apostasy depressing reading.
I was recently reading something along the lines that Father Buenger mentioned before he left us about additional factors related to our vocation crisis. It seems that certain vocation directors and vocation teams turn away candidates who don’t support the ordination of women or who exhibit a strong piety towards devotions, such as the Rosary. Such determined efforts to discourage orthodox candidates is not because of a lack of vocations, then, but by policies that deter certain viable candidates.
ReplyDeleteAnother factor too - hardly mentioned by the media during the recent Synod - was when Bishop Eduardo Reyes highlighted the fact that two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics live in the southern hemisphere, but two-thirds of the world’s Catholic priests live in the northern hemisphere. Have we got priests distributed worldwide in the wrong place, Bishop Reyes asks?
Sounds like the Church should be using the Pareto Principle in this instance to determine where to focus our efforts to maximise efficiency with our priest distribution. Do this first, I’m thinking, before diving in and advocating married priests and an end to celibacy.
https://catholiccitizens.org/views/89250/in-synods-married-priests-debate-somebody-finally-names-elephant-in-the-room/