Cast out the Nets

I apologize for the delay in responding to an important question in the comments section here - and I hope Veronica doesn't mind my posting my reply on a blog entry but I thought it was worthy of it's own post.

Veronica asked how we hold onto the faith in the face of the scandals and corruption.

I'm not going to be foolish enough to say the scandal has never affected me but I echo what others have already said in the comments section, John 6:66. Christ suffered long and hard to give me access to the Blood that can save my soul. The Blood of the King of Angels is at my disposal, where else would I go.

It's much more than that though, I can actually be enthusiastic about Christ's Church.

Back in the days when John Paul II would say we are entering a "Springtime" in the Church and to cast out the nets, I would wonder what the heck he was seeing.

Now, I think I understand it. The inconvenient time to speak the Truth and be a witness, the days to stand up and be counted, to be a witness and to lift high the Cross when the crowd turns against It.

The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is on the Via Dolorosa. Christ has many friends at the Resurrection, few have the stomach to be there at the scourging and Calvary.


I'dd add one more Scriptural reference to John 6:66, John 21: 15-19.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
16
He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
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He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.
18
11 Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."

It's loving Christ deeply enough to be enthusiastically be there under the Cross and trying to do what I can to feed the sheep.


BTW, it does not go unnoticed that the enemies of the Church have turned up to try to pin the Pope as a pedophile protector. A "growing Crisis".

Truly laughable.

Rembert Weakland protected a pedophile for many decades and when he finally sent it over to Rome to be reviewed, the pedophile was on his death bed. Even our civil institutions of law halt prosecution when you are gravely ill but they expect the Catholic Church to roll the deathbed into Canonical proceedings on your death bed The time for trials had passed.

Weakland was too busy in the bedroom bedding sexual partners but gets to pass the blame to the Pope?

There's an orchestration going on against the Pope and the Catholic Church that is being well-funded.



Fr. Rutler put it far more eloquently than I, so I'll leave you with his thoughts.

FROM THE PASTOR

March 28, 2010

by Fr. George W. Rutler

As Christ moved day by day toward the Cross, the Palm Sunday crowds thinned out. So it is in every generation when the Holy Church takes stands inhospitable to the regnant conceits of the age. There were no fair-weather friends on Calvary. By tracing our Savior’s footsteps in this Holy Week, we sign up with Him and against His foes. Some crucified Him out of ignorance and others out of malice, but the motives did not mitigate the suffering.

Since the Passion was the mystery of God’s love beyond human comprehension, Jesus said from the Cross that even those who acted viciously for their own ends did not know what they were doing. And there were those who, like the daydreams of Adam, would try to make themselves God, in an exercise of what Newman called “those giants, the passion and pride of man.”

Christ was crucified by some who invoked religion to justify themselves. It was not like the politician who recently said she was praying to St. Joseph to pass a healthcare bill that the Catholic bishops have said violates the sanctity of life and the freedom of conscience. That legislation is the most recent reminder that the Passion of Christ, victorious once and for all, is nonetheless relived in every spiritual struggle. This is why Pascal said that Christ is in agony until the end of the world. He said that because Christ Himself said: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40).

Pontius Pilate and Herod struck a deal so that Christ might die. By their very compromise, they “became friends with each other that very day” (Luke 23:12). Christ did not bring them together, their rejection of Christ did. Any legislation that denies Constitutional rights will be subject to judicial review, and the present health bill, which will impose an estimated half a trillion dollars in new taxes, will be answerable in the next election, but any legislation that achieves its ends by canceling Christ out of the social equation will be answerable to a loftier judgment. Pilot and Herod claimed they were acting for the good of the people. Pilate seems to have acted out of a lack of wisdom, and Herod out of a lack of intelligence. The compromise they reached was the alchemy of disaster. Likewise, those in our day who think that the promise of an executive order will prevent taxpayer funding of abortion are sadly mistaken. They may think they have secured “peace for our time,” and may even say to their friends, as Chamberlain told the British people in 1938: “And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.” And, whether naïve or dense, they will give thanks that Poland was never invaded, and unborn life is safe.

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CAST OUT YOUR NET!