Church: Men, please consider if you’re being called to the priesthood. Humans are in desperate need of shepherds in order to show them the way to Heaven.
Young man: Where would these poor misguided humans go if we don’t heed the call and they don’t hear the saving words of the gospel?
Church: Oh, they all go to Heaven anyway.
Young man: Oh.
Are we calling young men to stand bravely with Christ against our culture of secularism and materialism? Are we asking our young men to protect the weakest of us, the poorest, and the most vulnerable? Are we telling them that the world will hate them for standing with Christ but they must do so because He is THE way, THE path, and THE Life?
Or we could tell them all about the Synod on Synodality.
That’ll inspire the youth, eh?
Are we asking our young men to be a light in the darkness or are we just describing the darkness? We can no longer even define darkness. We no longer talk about sin. We are free floating beings bouncing aimlessly with no established course. We know that we must eventually end in Christ but we pretty much tell everyone that no matter which way you go you’ll end up in the right place. They’re not asking these young men to be shepherds, they’re asking them to be tour guides.
The Church must be at war with darkness.
We must call upon young men to muster the courage to stand against the world. And hey, you know what young men enjoy most? Actually, standing against the world.
In an effort to seem nice, too many in the Church are accepting too much. We are mistaking cowardice for kindness. We’re confusing outrage for earnestness.
Here’s the truth, if you lack the strength to say “no” to some things, you can’t say “yes” to anything.
Until the Church sounds a certain trumpet, young men will not follow.
Timothy 2:
- So you, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well. - Bear your share of hardship along with me like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
April 4, 2022 at 3:37 pm
When was seminary created? And when the requirement that a man have a useless secular degree before attending it? And when was the decision made to let me date during seminary (rather than test their resolve to celibacy fhen by not allowing them to date in seminary and kicking them out if they do)? And when was allowing them to date each other in seminary begun? Roll back all this crap and you’ll have priests again.
April 5, 2022 at 1:06 am
Seminary was created in the 1500s during the Catholic Reformation, because the Church of God had found through long, sad experience that recruiting clergy simply from the people and giving them minimal (and only practical training) was guaranteed to result in most priests being ignorant, dissolute, drunkards, or women-chasing or sodomitic pervs — or heresiarchs like Martin Luther.
April 5, 2022 at 3:06 am
” …most priests being ignorant, dissolute, drunkards, or women-chasing or sodomitic pervs — or heresiarchs like Martin Luther …”
Sounds like most of the priests that we endure today.
April 5, 2022 at 9:36 am
Somehow you need seminary to teach you to not drink. Although I learned that as a child. And if you don’t learn it as a child, how will seminary convince the inveterate drunk to stop? He’s too old to learn morality at that point.
April 5, 2022 at 9:34 am
That was just basic university though. Not like today.
April 4, 2022 at 3:59 pm
Its funny how Catholics always say the hierarchy and especially the pope ensures continuity. Yet I know of Protestant denominations with no real hierarchy to speak of and no seminary requirement for preachers (their closest equivalent to priests) and their doctrine actually has remained the same for 150 years, whereas look how much the RCC has changed in just 20. Recruiting clergy simply from the people and giving them minimal (and only practical training) seems to work better than making the clergy a professional class that has to endure through 10 years of univeraity level psychology classes!
April 5, 2022 at 1:13 am
Yes, George, it’s funny how the hierarchy and especially the pope have ensured continuity, as the historical records shows it has, and as St. Paul in Ephesians 4 says it’s there to do. Ha ha ho ho. So funny.
It doesn’t matter how long a few heretical sects have managed to hold onto their heresies — they’ve broken away from the Church and they’re not handing on the Faith, for they’ve renounced the Church’s hierarchy and are not in communion with the Church, particularly with the See of St. Peter. They in fact prove that Christ was right to give the Church her hierarchy and her papacy — not even the times when corruption infests the Church and we suffer a suspense of the Ecclesia docens amount to a good enough reason to reject the Faith.
April 5, 2022 at 9:37 am
Not a word about a “See of Saint Peter” in the Bible or any church father prior to 1100 after the split, bud. Look it up. Educate yourself out of the ghetto of RCC popedolatry.
April 5, 2022 at 3:44 pm
Uh, Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to the Kingdom…”upon this rock” Rather clear from Jesus himself.