By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Knowing the truth in Christ is a gift by which we are set free. Every grace, however, is conferred with a responsibility. We are constrained to also defend the truth.
Christ Himself is Truth and a requirement of our friendship with Him is to proclaim and defend the truth for the sake of salvation of souls.
Our final judgment will be one of mercy and reward if we keep in mind our Lord’s warning that “if you are ashamed of me before the world, I will be ashamed of you before my heavenly Father.”
People don’t embrace and teach heresy because they set out to hate God or others. Rather, it is because the love they have is not yet purified by Christ who is light, and in whose radiance our selfish and sinful tendencies are burned away.
Faith is conversion.
As I celebrate 25 years blessed by the gift of ordained priesthood, I look back in gratitude at God’s goodness in giving us the gift of His Church, the continued Incarnation, in a sense, of His Son, our Lord. The Church teaches the truth infallibly through the gift of the Holy Spirit, who leads us “into all the truth.”
Teaching the truth is one thing, but helping others to hear and heed it can be quite another.
Hence the life of the Church all over the world. There are many voices in the Church, but being sinners as we are, some of us can sometimes mix in something else entirely alien along with it.
This reminds me of the arsenic in the brownies story.
A mother is speaking with her children who want to go to see a movie that only has a little bad stuff in it. They acknowledge that the movie is not entirely good and may, in fact, be somewhat sinful or an occasion for such. The mother uses the example of the arsenic in brownies to help them understand that it may be best to not go to the movie at all, resulting in their missing out on the more edifying parts.
She says, “What if I were to bake your favorite chocolate brownies, but then put just the tiniest bit of arsenic in them? Would you eat them anyway?” The youngsters replied in chorus that of course, no, they would not eat the brownies with the arsenic in them. She then explained that watching movies with sinful content, no matter how worthy the other parts happened to be, was just like eating arsenic brownies.
Sometimes we get arsenic brownies in the Church. Fr. James Martin, SJ, ensconced for some time now at America magazine, with a presence on Twitter and other social networks, from time to time offers “arsenic” content in his writing on behalf of the Church and the faith. More recently, Fr. Martin was named to a part-time position in Rome for the Holy Father on behalf of social communications.
Fr. Martin rejects some of the teaching of the Church in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and actively encourages other to do so. He’s putting “arsenic” in the brownies.
(See p. 3A of this week’s issue for a LifeSiteNews article by Pete Baklinski titled “Vatican Adviser Says Some Saints ‘Were Probably Gay’.”)
Catholiccitizens.org reports that in October 2016 Martin accepted an award from New Ways Ministry for advancing NWM’s work of undermining Church teaching on the sinfulness of same-sex activity. (LifeSiteNews wrote this report.)
“One of the most well-known American Jesuit priests accepted an award from a pro-gay group that has been condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the U.S. Catholic bishops. Fr. James Martin, the editor [at-large] of America magazine, suggested in his lengthy New Ways Ministry award acceptance speech that some Catholic bishops who uphold the Church’s teaching on sexual morality might be ‘trapped brethren’ who are secretly gay themselves. He also praised a 17-year-old for ‘coming out’ on a retreat and equated sexual proclivities with race and age.
“Martin called New Ways Ministry co-founder Sr. Jeannine Gramick, a pro-abortion, dissident religious sister who supports same-sex ‘marriage,’ one of his ‘heroes’.”
Typically Fr. Martin confuses the issue when upbraided by me or other priests on Twitter, for example, by chastising with phrases like, “Father, how about charity for a brother priest.”
First, he completely changes the subject. His errors have nothing to do with his being a priest — except to make the situation worse because of the graver nature of the scandal as a result of his ordained ministry. He was ordained precisely for the purpose of faithfully handing on the truth in Christ.
Second, it appears that, for Fr. Martin, truth and charity have become mutually exclusive terms.
Fr. Martin may be offering his personal love for those caught in the addiction to same-sex activity, but he may never confuse it with the love of Christ who came to save sinners, not to confirm them in their fornication, be it natural as in the woman caught in adultery, or unnatural as in the case of same-sex behavior.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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