A Cry of the Heart to Our Bishops: Please Restore Order to the Church!

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Msgr. Pope has written courageously and well.
" Governance is suggested in the very title of the sacrament received in its fullness: the Sacrament of Holy Orders ( Sacramentum Ordinis ). The word “order” suggests, well, order! Maintaining order is generally understood to mean keeping things in good condition, directing things or people to their proper purpose and end.

To be fair, the Catechism of the Catholic Church points to a richer meaning etymologically:

The word order in Roman antiquity designated an established civil body, especially a governing body. Ordinatio means incorporation into an ordo. In the Church there are established bodies which Tradition, not without a basis in Sacred Scripture, has since ancient times called … ordines. And so the liturgy speaks of the ordo episcoporum, the ordo presbyterorum, the ordo diaconorum. Other groups also receive this name of ordo: catechumens, virgins, spouses, widows, … (CCC 1537)

So, the primary meaning of Holy Orders does not pertain simply to keeping things in good order but to ranks or distinctions within a larger group. However, key to the ancient Latin term was the idea of governance."
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Or rather, “please get out the bad apples before the rest of the world thinks the some has become the all.”
 
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28 ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

So the servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29 ‘No,’ he said, ‘if you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At the proper time I will tell the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
 
I agree with the article. The only thing I would add is that, with some glaring exceptions, most bishops and priests are doing their job better than most laity are.

Those laity who campaign against threats to prolife and secularism in media and education are themselves glaring exceptions. The disintegration of marriage is far more the fault of laity than bishops.

Why are there far more threads on shortcomings of bishops, than of laity?
 
Bishops and Priests are described in the Bible as Shepherds.
Jesus prophesies " I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered "
In the old and new testaments there is strong warnings against false shepherds
 
Carmel said:
Bishops and Priests are described in the Bible as Shepherds.
Jesus prophesies " I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered "
In the old and new testaments there is strong warnings against false shepherds
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There are lots more warnings against false sheep.

In your quote from the gospel, notice the pronoun “I”. He could have said “You”. He did not say “You”. We are filled now with would be Shepherd smiters. They multiply on the internet.

In 2018 America, the motto is “I have a problem, it must be YOUR fault.”
 
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commenter said:
There are lots more warnings against false sheep.

In your quote from the gospel, notice the pronoun “I”. He could have said “You”. We are filled now with would be Shepherd smiters. They multiply on the internet.

In 2018 America, the motto is “I have a problem, it must be YOUR fault.”
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Spiritually our pastors have been invested with a lot of authority for guiding and safeguarding the faithful.(particularly children )
Wherever there is a lot of authority there is necessarily also a lot of responsibility for fulfilling their duties to the flock.
Nobody escapes judgement. Lay people will also be held to account for their sins . If not in this life, then in the next
 
False sheep? What could this possibly mean? It is the shepherd who has been appointed (and anointed) to serve the flock. If he is blaming the sheep, perhaps he is not up to the task?
 
Mature views, I suggest, dont easily demonise weak shephers into either or categories of good and evil. Black and white Goodies and baddies tend to be of Hollywood.
 
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On a more practical level , people have full time jobs , along with families and all other activities it comes with. We also learn more about the faith in whatever ‘spare’ time we get …Catholic answers, EWTN, Formed etc(because nothing was really taught in church all these years). It’s a lot of pressure to also raise awareness about pro life issues , catholic teaching and the various shenanigans of the clergy alongside those responsibilities.

We don’t need the bishops and the pope to be perfect, just take appropriate action against child molesters and homosexual and heterosexual perverts and not wash their hands off by saying it’s a problem with ‘clericalism’ and try to get us to focus on ‘ocean waste’ and the environment.
 
Sophie111 said:
Mature views, I suggest, dont easily demonise weak shephers into either or categories of good and evil. Black and white Goodies and baddies tend to be of Hollywopd.
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If you want a correct view of those who lead children into sin read Luke 17:2 where Jesus says "It were better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck and he were thrown into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin "
 
I dont believe the victims of pedarists are sinners at all sorry.
 
C. S. Lewis wrote an excellent essay several decades ago, On the Dangers of Asking for National Repentance. Back then, as now, clergy were starting to preach more and more about Wickedness in High Places, and less and less of the kinds of sins likely committed by people in the congregation right now.

Repenting the sins of Other People (politicians, bishops, etc) is harmful to our own spiritual health. It takes our minds off our own ongoing conversion. It gives a (false) sense of having done some “repenting” without actually going to confession myself.

A few decades ago we were bombarded by sermons, articles, workshops, etc, repenting the sins of the Military, Big Business, Pollution, Inequality, and so on, with hardly anyone in line for confession. Now it’s Repent the Church time, still hardly anyone in line for confession.
 
Now is time to collect the weeds (bad shepards or bishops. cardinals)not send them into “prayer, pennance, and seclusion” but to “burn them up” that is laicize them as they do their own "workers in the field’ (priests) when they misbehave so their continued harm need not be feared.
 
Point taken, but something needs to be done to restore our confidence in the clergy to whom we confess. When my son was attending parochial school and the parish priest invited him for a private meeting (he did that with all the students) I cringed. I later learned that the meeting was with a small group and not one on one. But, my first reaction was that of concern and apprehension.
It was like the wolf inviting the sheep into his lair. (or so i felt) And you can’t blame me for that reaction.
Reputation and not salvation is what is at stake here.
 
I saw a lot of people at Confession yesterday.
 
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