Saturday, August 30, 2014

Episcopal Failure Causes Deepest Division

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Should the Church love so little that she encourages people to eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, so as to be “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27)?

I can’t blame Dr. Jeff Mirus for his “moral frustration” for “appointing to high office bishops who obscure Catholic teaching.” For the serious minded Catholic it’s a heart-breaking reality every day.

I’m sure there are plenty of divisions in the Church caused by the kind of pettiness and vanity that create cliques and express themselves in endless gossip. But in my experience over the past forty years, by far the greatest divisions within the Church have been created by bishops and priests who have failed to explain and defend Catholic doctrine. By their verbal contradictions, their administrative policies, and their failure to staff teaching positions with those who think with the Church, such clergy have created the deepest divisions of all.


Now, do not Churchmen who misrepresent, deny or complain about Catholic teaching foment division? Should the members of the Church be unconcerned about these remarks? Should they not rather give voice to their concern? Once again, more disunity has been caused in the Body of Christ by exactly this sort of episcopal failure than by any other single factor in my lifetime.


Read the full commentary here: An Appointment that Francis Should Withdraw

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