Sham Sham On You: Counterfeit Catholicism (Final Chapter)

A timely diagnosis of a condition is necessary to move a patient toward a cure. Old diseases continue to plague the human family; new ailments arise. Patients need reliable doctors (teachers) to provide treatments to enable health. Patients require a diet of truth, goodness and beauty to maintain health.

We are witnessing in the Church a seemingly endless parade of clergymen standing trial for criminal and sinful behaviour. How or why is it that shepherds of the Church choose to become poison to the body? Pride? Lust? Addiction to sinful behaviours? Diabolical influence?

Pope Benedict XVI said:

(T)he Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Given the frequency of reports detailing offences committed by clergy that point to a common deformation of mind and will, it seems abundantly clear that a legion of corrupt clergymen who share that affliction have contributed to a hurricane of destruction of epic proportions.

That orientation of mind, body and spirit has disposed men to diabolical influence, and conditioned men to appropriate power and offices of influence by which they can create conditions that fuel their disordered appetites. Pray for protection; refuse impenitent clergymen and others any opportunity to further harm the faithful.

A traitorous accommodation has enabled serial abusers to persist in their soul-killing behaviour. Mr. Theodore McCarrick, laicized bishop, and numerous others have tainted the Church with their gravely sinful behaviour, by their obstinate refusal to abide by the law of God.

We, all of us, are sinners. The penitent man receives absolution from his sins and receives grace in the Sacrament of Penance to grow in holiness.

Catechism of the Catholic Church
Article 4
The Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation

1422 "Those who approach the sacrament of Penance obtain pardon from God's mercy for the offense committed against him, and are, at the same time, reconciled with the Church which they have wounded by their sins and which by charity, by example, and by prayer labors for their conversion."

1451 Among the penitent's acts contrition occupies first place. Contrition is "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again."

By contrast, the impenitent man remains in his sins; he obstinately denies giving God's grace the opportunity to work in his life.

St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The new Counter Reformation, i.e., the New Evangelization, begins with the call to holiness and communion with Christ and His Church.

Apostolic Letter in the form of a motu proprio
Ubicumque et Semper
of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI

Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. Likewise, at the root of all evangelization lies not a human plan of expansion, but rather the desire to share the inestimable gift that God has wished to give us, making us sharers in his own life.