Under another post, concerning St. John Eudes’ remarks about bad priests being an affliction from God for the wickedness of the people – God gives them the priests they deserve – a sometime commentator here, whom I’ve permitted to have access to the combox for quite a while, took exception in unacceptable terms.
[]… This doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny. An All-loving, all-wise, all-knowing, all-good deity doesn’t inflict punishment by territory, out that makes him (small h, because of the incident error here) arbitrary and cruel. Why did some of your parishes get wonderful, decent, devoted pastors while the adjacent others got sexual predators and monsters? I can’t conclude that your God was that angry with a few blocks of real estate. Step back and consider whether the saint you mention works to your confirmation bias instead of your intellect.
First, note the “your parishes” and “your God”. The reason for this is that the commentator is an apostate who abandoned the Catholic Faith for the heresy of Unitarianism. NB: Being baptized, he is still a subject of the Catholic Church and no other.
Unitarianism arose in the Reformation period (16th–17th cc.), though it has roots in anti-Trinitarian heresies such as Arianism. Unitarians affirm belief in God but deny the Trinity of Persons, seeing God as a single person (usually identified as the Father) and rejecting the divinity of Jesus Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
Hence, he is an apostate and a heretic.
Next, he resorts to an insulting ad hominem at the end.
I respond.
For the sake of being complete, here is the quote from St. John Eudes’ The Priest: His Dignity and Obligations (HERE) to which the apostate objects:
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally. Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness. St. Gregory the Great says that priests and pastors will stand condemned before God as the murderers of any souls lost through neglect or silence….
When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, “Return, 0 ye revolting children . . . and I will give you pastors according to my own heart” (Jer. 3, 14-15). Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin.
What the commentator lacks is perspective and context.
Firstly, the setting is 17th c. France. Next, the language is French in the style of the day. Third, this is not a theological treatise, but an exhortation. It is pastoral, not scientific.
St. John Eudes was not theorizing in the abstract. He lived in 17th c. France, a time when clerical laxity was notorious. Parish priests often lived scandalous lives, catechesis was weak, and seminaries, newly mandated by the Council of Trent, were still being established. Eudes observed the ruin caused by unworthy clergy. He devoted his life to remedying it, founding seminaries, preaching missions, and forming priests. His words were not simply denunciation but a diagnosis and medicine: the sins of the faithful had brought about the scourge of negligent priests, and only repentance could bring renewal.
Hence, the words of St. John Eudes are in the style of a prophet, as anyone familiar with the Old Testament might recognize.
As an aside, God sent slaying angels among the people when they were wicked. He permitted famines and plagues to afflict the body. But human beings are both body and soul.
The presence of unworthy priests is, for St. John Eudes, a sign of divine chastisement. When God gives His people shepherds who devour rather than nourish, He is punishing them by permitting leaders who reflect their own sins.
This is grounded in Sacred Scripture. The prophet Jeremiah speaks in the Lord’s name:
14 Return, O faithless children,
says the Lord;
for I am your master;
I will take you, one from a city and two from a family,
and I will bring you to Zion.
15 “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. (Jer 3:14–15).
Repentance brings shepherds according to God’s heart; infidelity leaves the people to wolves.
In the Old Testament, the sins of the nation often resulted in corrupt leadership.
Hosea warns,
And it shall be like people, like priest;
I will punish them for their ways,
and requite them for their deeds. (Hos 4:9).
Isaiah laments of Israel’s leaders:
10 His watchmen are blind,
they are all without knowledge;
they are all dumb dogs,
they cannot bark;
dreaming, lying down,
loving to slumber.
11 The dogs have a mighty appetite;
they never have enough.
The shepherds also have no understanding;
they have all turned to their own way,
each to his own gain, one and all. (Is 56:10–11).
The unfaithfulness of God’s people and the negligence of their shepherds are linked in a mysterious reciprocity.
The Fathers of the Church expand on this.
St. Gregory the Great, in his Regula Pastoralis (2.4), insists that silence in a pastor is culpable in the face of error or evil.
The ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech; lest he either utter what ought to be suppressed or suppress what he ought to utter. For, as incautious speaking leads into error, so indiscreet silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed. For often improvident rulers, fearing to lose human favour, shrink timidly from speaking freely the things that are right… according to the voice of the Truth (John 10:12)… they fly when the wolf comes if they hide themselves under silence… For, for a shepherd to have feared to say what is right, what else is it but to have turned his back in keeping silence?
St. John Chrysostom, in his Commentary on Acts of the Apostles (Homily 3) writes:
“The soul of a bishop is for all the world like a vessel in a storm: lashed from every side, by friends, by foes, by one’s own people, by strangers . . . I do not think there are many among bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.”
For Chrysostom, the weight of pastoral responsibility is so great that without a life of holiness, a priest will almost certainly be lost, dragging others with him.
Chrysostom nowhere wrote that the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. Knock that off. However, the essence of his message is that, according to Chrysostom, few will be saved and there is a linkage between the flock and the shepherd.
These stark judgments are prophetic warnings: the corruption of priests has eternal consequences, not only for themselves but for the flock entrusted to them.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 87, a. 7) that God’s punishments for sin can be twofold: medicinal, intended to bring sinners back to the right path, or vindictive, as just retribution.
The sending of bad pastors can be understood in both senses. On the one hand, they serve as a bitter medicine, showing the faithful the gravity of their sins and urging them to repentance. On the other hand, they are also a punishment justly deserved, inasmuch as those who spurn God’s law deserve to be ruled by the wicked.
Aquinas, in his commentary on Isaiah, notes how God sometimes punishes a sinful people by giving them rulers after their own heart, allowing them to taste the fruit of their rebellion. St. Thomas states in Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram, 3.1 (97):
And because violent dominion is not only the fault of man, but also is the punishment of God judging the sins of the people, as it says in Job 34:30: ‘who makes a man that is a hypocrite to reign for the sins of the people,’ therefore the first part is divided into two parts: for in the first, it is predicted as far as it is a punishment inflicted by God; in the second, it is denounced as far as it is a fault committed by man, where it says, ‘O my people’ (Isa 3:12).
He immediately applies this to Isaiah 3:4:
“Et dabo pueros principes eorum, et effeminati dominabuntur eis … And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.” (Is 3:4 – Vulgate – DR)
In Hebrew that “effeminate” is related to caprice “(as a fit coming on), i.e. vexation; concretely a tyrant: babe, delusion”. So, “caprice shall rule over them” In the Greek LXX we have empaíkt?s: “a derider, i.e. (by implication) a false teacher: mocker, scoffer.” Jerome realized this into effeminati.
The behavior of the “effeminate” is capricious, immature, tyrannical.
The chastisement of corrupt clergy is not God’s last word. It is His warning cry. If His people turn back to Him, He will raise up saints to guide them. This dynamic has played out through history. In times of decadence, God has raised up reformers such as St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic in the 13th, St Charles Borromeo in the 16th, St. John Vianney in the 19th.
Chastisement precedes renewal, and holiness among the faithful produces holy shepherds.
This is not a numbers game, or something as shallow as real estate.
However, speaking of real estate, Numbers 16 turns the sock inside out with an example of God’s punishment against legitimate leaders. The earth opens and swallows up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram with 250 followers and their families because they rebelled against Moses and Aaron. Like feminists who demand ordination, they had claimed they were being unfairly excluded from ruling. After that, seeing the literal “land grab” (the land doing the grabbing) those who were not of the tribe of Aaron who had dared to burn incense at the tent of meeting were consumed by fire from God. Then God sent a plague for the rest.
Moses interceded and atoned for the rest of the backsliders and stopped the ensuing plague that God had sent as frosting on the cake of rebellion. In the plague: 14700 died.
God takes wickedness seriously.
Moses bargained with God for the people over the calf incident and the Korah event. Abraham negotiated with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. Hannah interceded with God. Hezekiah obtained longer days so he could put things in order.
The Blessed Virgin herself interceded with the Lord at Cana. Though that seems to have arose from miscalculation rather than wickedness.
God permits situations in which He desires, for our own good and His ultimate glory, that we have earnest and urgent recourse to Him.
The Devil reportedly told St. John Vianney, “If there were three such priests as you, my kingdom would be ruined”. This statement, often recounted in discussions about the saint, highlights the immense impact of a holy priest on the spiritual battle against evil. It underscores the power of a priest dedicated to God’s work, particularly in the ministry of confession and penance, which was St. John Vianney’s particular strength. The devil’s statement about the “three such priests” is a testament to the transformative power of a holy priest, who actively dismantles the devil’s influence and bring souls closer to God.
The story serves as a reminder of the importance of priests and their role in the spiritual lives of the faithful.
Things get so bad that, finally, there is a turning of the heart to God so strong that there is a kind of ripple effect of grace that overpowers the cancels and replace the waves of the wicked.
We may be experiencing this in our own day.
For St. John Eudes, corrupt priests are instruments of divine justice, urging the people to turn back to God. At the same time, they stand as a fearful reminder of the weight of the priesthood: pastors will be judged as murderers of the souls lost through their silence or vice. The remedy for corrupt priests is not only reform in structures or institutions, but above all holiness among the faithful, prayer for vocations, and fidelity to Christ. In this way, the medicinal scourge of unworthy priests can be transformed into a grace that purifies the Church and prepares the way for renewal.
The mystery of the priesthood is inseparable from the mystery of God’s providence. When His people sin, He may permit them to be chastised by negligent shepherds. When they return, He will not fail to send shepherds after His own heart.
My intellect informs me to stick with the saints and holy writers, including Sacred Writ, and not the criticism of an apostate, for whom I sincerely desire repentance and a return to the Faith.
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Many years ago I read a number of nonfiction books by Dorothy Sayers. When I saw that the late Father Hunwicke admired her, it pleased me. Be that as it may, I think it was in a book she wrote to encourage Christians in the UK during WWII, titled Begin Here, she stated that the 10 commandments should not be read as “if you break this commandment then God will do this to you, rather if you break these commandments the very breaking of them will cause bad things to happen. That is, when people do not give Our Lord proper honor, commit adultery, lie, cheat, steal, commit murder, fail to take care of their elderly parents, then bad things happen without any special intervention by God. The commandments simply state this is the way the world is. The Church militant is only going to have good priests and bishops if it collectively decides it is not going to put up with bad ones. If we do, naturally that is what we will get.
If there is anything wrong with this way of looking at it, please correct me.
Given the Latin instructions I’ll take another shot at “Zed Notation.” Even at the risk of being called a Smarticus Pantsicus. Or even a Magnus Smarticus Pantsicus.
1) QhV+ KgVIII (coactus)
2) BdV+ NeVI (coactus)
3) BxeVI++ (scaccus mattus)
The angle from which I look at it may come across as corny, but… Good pastors, holy pastors, are a gift from God that we do not merit or deserve ourselves because we are sinners. But we may easily feel we are entitled to them because of God’s promises. So God allows us to get bad pastors for both reasons Fr. Z explains. Of course the just are sometimes, even often, caught in that crossfire, but I like to believe that under bad pastors, good people can be purified by their suffering and a renewed appreciation of God’s gifts as with any other trial. It seems to be proven by experience that when a good pastor succeeds another good pastor, people are more likely to complain and be picky and disagreeable, whereas when a good pastor succeeds a bad one, people tend to thank God for his mercy and his love.
The operative bottom line for us laity, I think, is not only whether we pray and offer for priests, but whether we do appreciate and care for them, or just treat them like sacrament dispensers. Perhaps this is ignorance, but there are so many little things we can do that can make a difference. Saying thanks for a good sermon. An invitation for dinner. Asking for concrete things one might help with in their personal needs or those of the parish. And so on and so forth.
If I may say – a few years back, when my parish was undergoing about 8 months without a pastor (we were under the leadership of a beloved retired priest in the interim), there was a conversation among parishioners, who were worried. One faction was concerned we would get an ultra-conservative, and others, that we would get a rabid liberal.
A wise friend of mine (the mother of a recently professed Nashville Dominican Sister), stepped in and said, “If he is not the priest we want, it is up to us to pray hard for him every day until, by the grace of God, he becomes the priest need. And “faithful” is the only label that matters to any Catholic.”
I never forgot what my friend said. And from that moment on, we parishioners prayed for a pastor who loves us, but who loves Jesus more. And that is exactly who God and the Bishop sent to us!
And yes – we still pray for Father every day without fail – a Rosary before every daily Mass.
What a charitable, yet thorough thrashing you just gave. Let’s pray the OP receives the critique in the spirit in which it was given.
I want you to know I’ve read this post, that I’m sorry for angering you, and I won’t debate the points I raised further without your invitation. I don’t want to presume a dialogue.
In my 20s I was a Catholic seminarian. I cannot make your faith accord with my conscience. I no longer believe there is God. I’ve been a Unitarian Universalist for 20 years now, which is different from the historical Unitarianism you outlined. I suppose that does make me an “apostate.” That does not mean I do not have respect and appreciation for Catholic tradition our the the intellect and precision with which you approach the Christian tradition.
Quite a defense of Eudes.
I am always curious when Vianney is cited in an argument. The “if there were three priests like you” quote is a particularly odd one. It is self aggrandizing, which is not particularly saintly, but even accepting that he is not bragging but merely accurately relating what was said, his source is an entity we frequently refer to as Father of Lies or Prince of Lies. He puts himself in the position of being a bragard relying on a source he himself would impeach.
Post: Here are my solemn words to you.
I wasn’t angry. I’m tired of the B as in B, S as in S.
You are an apostate. And you are a heretic in denying the Triune God. You are not even a Christian.
“Conscience” blah blah blah. Get a little closer to the reality of things and, when you do, there will be the relational God, staring at you, longing for you.
Dialogue on this point is now only one way, because you are quite simply wrong.
Your conscience is malformed. Maybe something happened, I don’t know. You need to reassess and come back to the true Faith. You are closer to the end of your life than the beginning and time is running out.
You are going to die one day.
I don’t know what happened back then. In the end, it THAT doesn’t make a difference compared with your eternal judgment.
One confession. You are back.
One sincere confession.
We don’t want your respect. We want you.
The thing with “I cannot make your faith accord with my conscience” really does sound awkward.
There is, I suppose, a reason that you, dear PostCatholic, don’t say “with my reason”, “with the conclusions I reached in my sincere and, as far as I am able, unbiased philosophical speculation”, and that sort of thing. Now if you had said that, you’d have been wrong too; there is only one truth, and it is that God Is, and the rest of the Apostolic Creed including the part where the Catholic Church with her divine mandate comes into play. But still: it strikes me as odd and significant that on that front you don’t even appear to try.
What does your conscience, the way the word is usually used, have to do with the factual question of God’s existence and the rest of it? I mean, at all?
YIKES
To Post Catholic,
In my years, I have encountered many like you. Most know they should be back in the One True Church. I tell them that something is holding them back. A sin, a bad behavior, sometime an intellectual sin. When you say you don’t believe in God then I must assume you don’t believe in in Satan.
Please please, listen to Fr. Z
PostCatholic: I don’t understand your position at all. If you don’t believe there is a God, doesn’t that make you an atheist? What would it mean to “be” a unitarian universalist if you don’t believe in a god? Is it any different than being part of any other social services/volunteer group?
If I didn’t believe in god, I wouldn’t be anything. What would be the point? I’d just stay home.
“Hezekiah obtained longer days so he could put things in order.”
This is very interesting, and I’m glad Father included it. I’ll read that chapter closer my next time through. I’d always interpreted Hezekiah there as “kicking the can down the road” (as so many contemporary politicians seem to be wont to do), so to speak.
Too cynical for my own good, I reckon. Something to ponder.
I cannot make your faith accord with my reason, either. Nothing ”happened back then.” My move from church-going Catholic to former Catholic was a slow process that tracked with my graduate studies and a slow realization that I no longer believed what the Catholic church professes.
I am interested still in religious history and in Christianity in particular. These have shaped the western world in which we live. This blog frequently touches on topics that are interesting to me , that I have studied extensively, and often fills in gaps in my knowledge. Not every Christian religion approaches its faith with the rigor and depth of study that Catholicism does, and I admire you for that.
I made a promise that if I ever returned to Catholicism, I’d allow Rev. Zuhlsdorf to hold the paten as I communicated. Told a classmate of mine who is now a priest in Victoria, BC that I’d let him receive that confession and offer that communion. It’s a vanishingly remote possibility.
In answer to Dustin F, a plurality of Unitarian Universalists are non-believers. You can learn more about what we do believe at any UU church’s website. I don’t think it’s appropriate that I elaborate on that here.
“My move from church-going Catholic to former Catholic was a slow process that tracked with my graduate studies”
Sadly, ….I think you have a huge lot of company. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I encountered….many…principles that conflicted with Catholic teaching. I encountered many people who believed many different things. I was shielded, slightly, from these ideas, by taking a natural science major, not social studies. I took the required humanities courses, ..and continued on my way. A few times, I tried learning of another’s beliefs, seeking to “respect” other ideas. It never worked. ..Ultimately, I had to believe the Church’s teaching… or something else.
There was never any workable middle ground. No compromise could be made.
Ironically, a movie I saw then, Sevens, reminded me of the defined deadly sins. If I’m honest, academia had then embraced pride in itself. Tragic, because higher learning originally aimed to tell Truth.
I have many times wished that bishops around the world would take education far more seriously than they do. These last several decades, …they seem more to go along to get along.
Be careful of what you think you have learned. Even natural science courses had their glitches with understanding the world, Man, and the universe.
The fool says in his heart “there is no God” — psalm 14
Even more foolish is the one who, having one accepted, recants.
I never comment, and I am not a consistent reader these days. But I had to respond to Post: I am sorry the educational system has failed you (even if you perhaps don’t see it that way at present). I’m not going to attempted to debate with you. I’ve rarely seen that bring a heart back to the Church. But I am going to fast and pray for you, and I would encourage Father’s kind readers to do the same. I’m also going to take up your case with Saint Therese; all the better if you find her rather sappy and Victorian. I’ve never seen her iron will and persistent intercession fail. And finally, I’m going to get my young children to pray for you. May the Divine Lover wound your heart by way of the wisdom on the lips of children and of babes.
Please let us know when you come home. We’re waiting for you with love.
Remind me not to get on Fr. Z’s bad side and try to make it public – I wouldn’t win that one.
On the substantive issue: In addition to mistaking St. John Eudes’s comments as legally precise determinations, when they are generic and prophetic, I think Post is floundering in another issue that people often get wrapped up in mistakenly: namely, bad things happening to good people. While God might (and manifestly has) punished whole cities and states for sinful behavior, this doesn’t imply that every person in the city or state was equally sinful and equally due that specific punishment. Sometimes God allows a general punishment to chastise a people, even while a saint among them suffers alongside them. There are plenty of reasons He might do this, (e.g. they might deserve temporal punishment due for old sins that they have confessed but have not satisfied in justice) but the general answer to the problem is found in St. Paul: all things work to the good of those who love Him. All things includes the sufferings they bear, even sufferings after a saint has made full satisfaction for his past sins and is clean of heart. St. Paul indicates one reason: to make up in them what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. But there can be other reasons as well. In point of fact, God’s Providence is so comprehensive that He has already planned for how often I will receive some suffering to make satisfaction for my past sins, and even the sufferings I receive that I don’t “deserve” will be for my good, either making me more pure, or keeping me from some other sin, or something else. We won’t know the details until heaven: the virtue of hope entails embracing that not knowing and persisting in believing what St. Paul said about those “all things”: I don’t NEED to know, now.
As jflare29 says of Post’s studies, they seem to have been a contributing factor in his apostasy. It is my guess that likely this process started long before college: even in most Catholic schools, there is far too much acceptance of non-Catholic thinking, and far too little education under a truly Catholic sense of truth. This goes double for Catholic colleges: out of over 200 in the US, fewer than 20 merit the name Catholic, and fewer than 10 are truly reliable for teaching in a way that you would be confident the student comes out the other side a strong, life-long Catholic. The bishops don’t seem to have a clue about this representing a problem, they seem to think it represents the normal way of education: expect to lose more than half your kids by age 22.