What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

The Gospel reading for Mass today, in the Novus Ordo calendar, was from Matthew 25:14-30, which is the parable of the man who goes on a journey and entrusts his possessions, and different amounts of talents (a huge amount) of silver or gold, to his servants each according to his ability.  At the end, when the master returns and settles us, we hear the sometimes puzzling:

"For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."

St. John Chrysostom has something to say about this passage in a sermon On the Gospel of Matthew 78.3:

Let us therefore, knowing these things, contribute whatever we have – weath, diligence or care giving – for our neighbor’s advantage.  for the talents here are each person’s abilities, whether in the way of protection, or in money, or in teaching or in whatever thing you have been given.  Let no one say, "I have but one talent and can do nothing with it."  You are not poorer than the widow.  You are not more uninstructed than Peter and John, who were both "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts 4:13).  Nevertheless, since the demonstrated zeal and did all things for the common good, they were received into heaven.  For nothing is so pleasing to God as to live for the common advantage. 

For this end God gave us speech, and hands, and feet, and strength of body and mind and understanding, that we might use all these things, both for our own salvation and for our neighbor’s advantage.  Our speech not only is profitable also for instruction and admonition.  And if indeed we used it to this end, we should be imitating our Master; but if for the opposite ends, the devil.

A bunch of women think they have been ordained Catholic priests.  This is risible on the surface, of course, but it is spiritually dangerous for them and those who have been duped into believing it.  As a matter of fact, they are running the risk of the eternal punishment of hell for themselves and others.

Today I encountered a paragraph in a letter of St. Augustine about the schismatic heretic Donatists who, in defiance of the Church and based on what they perceived were abuses or at least things they would not tolerate, set up their own orders and altars and put many people at risk of damnation.   Let’s here a bit of the Bishop of Hippo who penned a letter also signed by his friend and fellow Bishop Alypius together with Bishop Fortunatus to a certain Generosus.  Generosus was a Catholic whom a Donatist had tried to convert.  The Donatist had claim a private revelation by which he set himself apart from the authority of the Catholic Church.   Donatism was a peculiarly North African phenomenon.

There is a parallel, if not perfect, with the folly of these women who think they are ordained, at least in the results if not in the details.  Here is the beginning of ep. 53 written around the year 400.

To Generosus, their most beloved and honorable brother, Fortunatus, Alypius and Augustine send greetings in the Lord.

1.  You wanted us to know of the letter that a priest of the Donatists sent to you and although you also laugh it to scorn with the mind of a Catholic, we, nonetheless, ask that you bring to him this reply in order that you may rather do him some good if he is not hopelessly stupid.  He, after all, wrote that an angel commanded him to inform you of the practice of the Christianity of your city, though you hold on to the Christianity, not of your city, nor only of Africa or of the Africans, but that of the whole world, which has been and is being announced to all the nations.  Hence, it is not enough that the Donatists are not ashamed to have been cut off and that they do not help themselves in order to return to the root when they can, but they try also to cut others off along with them and to prepare them for the fire, like dried braches.  In his clever vanity, as I see it, he pretends on your account that an angel stood before him.  Hence, suppose that there stood before you that same angel.  And if that angel said these things to you that this man says he conveys to you at the angel’s command, you must bear in mind the words of the apostle who says, "Even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim a gospel to you apart from what we have proclaimed to you, let him be anathema" (Gal 1:8).  For it has been proclaimed to you by the words of the Lord Jesus Christ that His Gospel will be announced to all the nations that then the end will come.  It has been proclaimed to you through the writings of the prophets and of the apostles that the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendents, that is, to Christ, when God said to him, "In your descendents all the nations will be blessed"(Gn 12:3, 22:18).  Even if, then an angel from heaven said to you who have these promises, "Abandon the Christianity of the whole world, and hold onto that of the sect of Donatus," whose practice is explained to you in the letter of the bishop of your city, that angel ought to be anathema, because he tried to cut your off from the whole, shove you into a part, and separate you from the promises of God.

For Augustine, one of the very worst things that could happen was schism.