In my diocese, you can’t get ordained without a COVID vaccine. The Bishop has ordered that all seminarians submit to an abortion-derived experimental injection in order to remain in the seminary to discern Holy Orders. Meanwhile, other dioceses have actually pulled their seminarians out of the North American College in Rome to spare their young men such unholy nonsense.
Both claim the authority of Church teaching, but a mandate cannot be both a blessing and an abuse. There is no question which is in the right and which is wrong. Even the loosest reading of the lowest level of magisterial teaching does not support coerced bodily injections and will always support rights of conscience. And yet here we are… seminaries full of men who have surrendered their formation to leaders who either can’t properly discern right from wrong, don’t care to try, or even intentionally mislead.
Don’t want to be accused of being an abuser? Stop acting like one.
When a spiritual father or formation team demands that a young man violate his conscience and his bodily integrity in order to serve God, it is not only a breech with the Church’s teaching but it comes uncomfortably close to grooming. For what? Who knows? Regardless of the end goal, what is immediately concerning is that seminary students are giving authority over every aspect of their lives to men who are untrustworthy.
Imagine yourself as an 18, 19, 20, 24 year old…
Someone in a position of authority over you gives you the ultimate test of obedience: to submit not only your body but also your very soul… and you comply.
I ask you, what is left to demand? If they have broken down that barrier in the name of charity and “science,” all other doors are unlocked. Anyone who has that much control over a young man simply has too much control.
My own diocese, which is demanding a blind obedience of its seminarians, is the same one reeling from the arrest of one of its popular priests. Robert McWilliams was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking, sexual exploitation of children, and child pornography. Evidence goes back to his time in seminary.
Is it the fault of the seminary at any level? Hard to say. But if you don’t want to be accused of being a groomer, don’t act like one. If you don’t want to raise abusers, don’t abuse. At some point, McWilliams unhealthy behaviors were overlooked, perhaps because the seminary system here has lost a healthy perspective on what real fatherhood, brotherhood, and manhood truly look like. As one writer put it:
Either its seminary was unable to weed out a sociopath ordained a priest just five years ago, or it was unable to realize that a deranged and unstable trauma victim was unsuitable for priestly ministry.
We need spiritual fathers who are real men and not sweet-tongued narcissistic manipulators who greedily hold the keys to the door of the call of Jesus Christ. The COVID vaccination requirement for ordination, dripping with the language of faith, is an egregious abuse which betrays deep malformation among leadership.
I’m not even going to dip my toe into the broader cesspool of pornography, deviancy, addiction, and heterodoxy which plague our houses of formation. But let me be clear… a man who isn’t girded for battle with a strong sense of his masculine identity in Christ should not step foot in a seminary door.
As laity, we must rouse ourselves and demand better of our shepherds and then become holy ourselves. Do we really want priests ordained who cannot discern such things properly? Won’t they just become the next generation of abusers? Of course they will. That is the way the human family works according to God’s design. We either become like our dysfunctional forebears or we fight against hell to disrupt the patterns. May the generational sins end with us.
To bishops and priests…
To bishops and priests pretending that the trauma of the last two (ten) years never happened. To those behaving more like leftist politicians than spiritual sons of Peter and Paul. To those of you huddling in committees trying to figure out retention and enrollment... as if the answer will ever be anything less than a radical vigorous fatherly outpouring and personal renewal…
Your pews are filled with bleeding souls. You can do what you like about it (or nothing), of course. You will just have to be at peace with the consequences.
The familiar habit that the Church is for many of your spiritual children will last only a little while longer. It is a false peace. Soon the fruits of abandonment and abuse will ripen and you will be faced with a crisis you can no longer cover with pious platitudes and shiny marketing.
You stand upon your pedestals and preach that filthy vaccines are charity and mandates are holy, and your people are either forced to live with a dangerous cognitive dissonance or ask the reasonable question…
"Where is Church?"
Your flock will not long be content looking for it in your newest program or initiative. Because it isn’t there. There is time to figure it out... but not much. Do not console yourselves that you have time to turn the ship around. It is not only going in the wrong direction but it is sinking and on fire. The deep work and action must begin now.
You do not have time to drown your sorrows and burdens in a bottle and wallow in pity about the weight of the thing. You must be clear-minded and free. The grass isn't greener here or there. The answer isn't in your screen. Break those damnable chains. It is possible. It is necessary. We are called now... and we can all rest in heaven soon enough.
Get up, Father. Bishop. Brother. Please, get up. The door is closing. Lead the way or get left behind. The heart of Christ's Church will beat and rise with or without you... and you must decide your course when the edifices of man fall.
"Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. To him be the dominion for ever and ever. Amen." 1 Peter 5
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