By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
“Feed my sheep.” Many of you will likely read this as you are basking in the gastronomical afterglow of the Thanksgiving feast. I wish you and yours a blessed one.
All holiday-related excesses aside, eating is life. We give thanks this week each year in particular for the bounty God has provided through the blessing of this land. We remember the hardships of those who first came to settle the country and endured innumerable hardships and death to make prosperity possible for us.
We properly offer prayers in a sacrifice of praise to make this occasion complete. Some very appropriately begin the day with Holy Mass, the perfect Thanksgiving because Christ is present as the Eucharist, God’s own giving of thanks.
Coming to this new land was a sacrifice also for our fathers in faith who left Catholic Europe to make a new life here. Since that time we have fought to pursue our rights to worship in spirit and truth. We have a right to the truth and the Lord has sent our bishops with the duty to provide it.
The McCarrick Report describes the arc of corruption which led McCarrick to an apogee of power and influence in the Church. His ministry was not known as one heralding the truth above all other considerations. He infamously deceived the bishops in regard to a letter of Benedict XVI which mandated that pro-abortion politicians not receive Holy Communion. He built his career on cozying up to pro-abortion politicians in part because he refused to teach them the truth and coopted the Lord in this sin by giving Communion to Catholic pro-abort pols.
This, it hardly needs be said, is a diabolical perversion of the Lord’s mandate to our bishops to “feed my sheep.” The Eucharist is the very Body and Blood of the Lord who described Himself as “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Reception of His Body and Blood of the Eucharist in the absence of truth is a useless sacrilege, a sin.
Wherever we see a reversal of God’s work, a lie substituted for the truth, we see the death-dealing corruption of Father of Lies and the destroyer of souls. McCarrick was and is a diabolical influence through the influence of the Evil One. Some of the men he promoted now occupy some of the highest offices in the Church.
Power together with fleshly pride has polluted the Church and placed innumerable souls at risk of eternal damnation through scandal.
The most sacred charge which Jesus Christ gave to Peter in the heart-wrenching moment when he came to contrition after his triple denial on the night of the Lord’s death, concerned not him, but the sheep He sent to him, the first Pope. In that moment of contrition and conversion and love for Jesus Christ, the Lord made it crystal clear to Peter, and to all of the Church’s ministers, that their love for Him will be seen, before all else, in how they care for the sheep.
“Feed My sheep.” The first criterion for a priest, a bishop, a Pope, the one thing which best demonstrates their love for Jesus Christ, and their desire to be saved, is how they treat the sheep whom they serve in the Lord’s name and on His behalf. They must nourish, give growth and life, to the members of the flock of the Lord if they would save their own souls.
St. John Paul II taught in Ecclesia de Eucharistia about this “Food” central to our lives of faith: “The Eucharist, as Christ’s saving presence in the community of the faithful and its spiritual food, is the most precious possession which the Church can have in her journey through history. This explains the lively concern which she has always shown for the Eucharistic mystery, a concern which finds authoritative expression in the work of the Councils and the Popes. How can we not admire the doctrinal expositions of the Decrees on the Most Holy Eucharist and on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass promulgated by the Council of Trent? For centuries those Decrees guided theology and catechesis, and they are still a dogmatic reference-point for the continual renewal and growth of God’s People in faith and in love for the Eucharist.
“In times closer to our own, three encyclical letters should be mentioned: the encyclical Mirae Caritatis of Leo XIII (May 28, 1902), the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII (November 20, 1947) and the encyclical Mysterium Fidei of Paul VI (September 3, 1965).”
With what are they to feed the sheep? With the “most precious possession” which is the Lord Himself: in His word, in sacrament, in truth. These three are all indispensable aspects of the Person of the Savior present today in His Church. The word and sacrament presume truth, that ministers will speak and model the truth in their own lives as well as their preaching and teaching.
For years now this has not been the case. Bishops who, like McCarrick, scandalize the flock by giving the Eucharist to public and unrepentant sinners have failed in their mandate to feed the sheep. They have scandalized and scattered them, jeopardizing their salvation by weakening, and in some cases destroying, their faith.
We also this month saw the bishops in a virtual conference instead of their usual fall USCCB gathering. It was a case of “too little, too late” when Archbishop Gomez, the president of the conference, issued a scolding in light of pro-abortion Biden’s possible election to the highest office in the land, calling it a “difficult and complex situation.” Where were the bishops before the election? Missing in action.
Gomez voiced his concern that Biden’s full-throated advocacy for legal child murder will “undermine our preeminent priority of the elimination of abortion.” Biden also opposes the Church on marriage and religious liberty. “These policies,’ Gomez added, “pose a serious threat to the common good. When politicians who profess the Catholic faith support them . . . it creates confusion among the faithful about what the Church actually teaches on these questions.”
I have a suggestion for Archbishop Gomez and his confreres as to a very potent means of clearly teaching the faithful and eliminating confusion: publicly excommunicate public sinner Biden.
Fr. Vierling on Parler had the following response: “‘Catholic’ politicians have been advocating for abortion for 47 years without fear of episcopal censure. So, very disingenuous to complain about bishops being ‘beset.’ They made their own bed.”
The bishops will never be at risk for turning away for a moment from the endless, fruitless dialogue with the false and worldly wolves who attack the Church in order to attend more lovingly to the many wounded and weakened souls. They might even save their own.
With Catholics in France and elsewhere kneeling to pray on sidewalks outside of locked churches with our Lord, our sole spiritual food sacramentally present, imprisoned inside, bishops have a clear sign of their needed priorities. Will they open their eyes? It’s never too late to hope.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Continue the conversation on Parler, the new free speech social network, where you’ll find me @FatherKevinMCusick
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