Episode 985: Priests cause the Perdition of the Laity

Catalina de Jesús was born in 1717 in Guayaquil, Ecuador; she was professed in the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine in Quito where she became Mother Prioress. She was gifted with many visions and mystical experiences, which included prophecies of the future. She wrote a copious autobiography in which she gives details of the laxity of the clergy and religious of her time. She died in the odor of sanctity in 1795.

TIA includes here an excerpt where she narrates a vision of Our Lord explaining that bad priests and religious – male and female – are the cause of the perdition of laymen. If Our Lord was angry with the clergy and religious of her time in the 1700s, what would He say about them in our post-Vatican II days?

The words of Mother Catalina seem perfectly applicable to our times.

Our Lord Jesus Christ:

The priests and male and female religious are the cause of all the perdition of the world.

The ecclesiastical state is the cause of the perdition of the lay state.

In the Law of Grace I set them [the priests & religious] as an example, so that they might hold back the errors of the epoch.

But, since they have allowed themselves to completely lose the respect [of the people] because of their bad customs, the world no longer pays any attention to them, which is the reason why their preaching garners no profit.

If they would live as they should, My Spirit would infuse fervor into those in the world. And in this way, there would be moderation in the customs.

But, since the laity see them [the clergy and religious] doing and acting the same as themselves, they have come to hold them in disdain and their teaching has no effect among them.

If a Servant of mine steps out and speaks the truth, the world listens with admiration. But the laity benefit little or nothing from it because this custom [of not paying the religious any mind and holding them in disdain] is already deeply ingrained, caused by the many religious and ecclesiastics who are deeply engrained in vices that have given bad example.

These [priests and religious] are the principal reason why my Arm desires to unleash its Justice.
Our Lord on Bad Priests
These are the words of Christ to Marie des Vallées on the situation of the clergy at her time, the 17th century. It reminds us keenly of the words of Sister Lucy to Fr. Fuentes in 1957, asking him to tell all Catholics to not wait for the orientation of priests, Bishops and Popes to do penance and reform spiritually.

The description of the episode below is self-explanatory and does not need any comment.

The source of these words is the well-documented book La Vie Admirable et les Révélations de Marie des Vallées, written by Emile Dermenghem

Our Lord Jesus Christ:

Jesus Christ commanded Sister Marie [des Vallées] to make a strange symbolic procession in Coutances [in Normandy, France]. She should first recite the litanies of the Father standing in the very center of the downtown square of the city, then the litanies of the Son at the filthiest cesspool that she could find, and finally the litanies of the Holy Spirit before a crucifix in the church.

She conscientiously fulfilled all these commands (“I was very surprised,” she said, “at this order and I saw even the Virgin tenderly seeping; nonetheless, it was necessary to do it”), and not without raising the surprise of passers-by and the mockery of the local boys who, seeing her kneeling at a stinky cesspool under the walls of the city, heckled her and even threw some stones at her. Most of the good bourgeois shook their heads and criticized her. …

In fact, what Marie prayed for was the general conversion of the bad world. The first litanies in the square were to call the Infidels to conversion. The second ones in the cesspool were for the conversion of the bad Christians and especially for the bad priests, because, Christ said: “I am in My Church in an infamous cesspool as a man forced to stay there by the ropes that bind him there, because My Divine Charity obliges me.” The third litanies, finally, “were to bring the deluge and effusion of graces in the time of the great conversion.”
Our Lord on Priests in Hell

Among the lay faithful, principally among traditionalists, there is a sort of idolatry of priests that lacks any good sense. Going far beyond the due respect owed to their elevated mission, they consider priests as infallible and morally perfect.
Trying to correct this unbalanced position, Christ once again himself speaks to the Servant of God Marie des Vallées, French mystic whose spiritual director was St. John Eudes, the apostle of the Devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

The source of these words is the well-documented book La Vie Admirable et les Révélations de Marie des Vallees, written by Emile Dermenghem

Our Lord Jesus Christ:

She [Marie des Vallées] was afflicted by the disagreements that too often appear among the pious: "The envy, the jealousies and the divisions that reign in the cloisters are a stumbling block for the faithful." The mockery appeared to her as a great sin. Many of her visions are a very severe satire of the diverse defects of the religious.

About the heavy responsibility that weighs over ecclesiastics who are in charge of souls, Jesus told her:

"They will be judged more severely than others. Those who fall in their mission will be punished for the faults of all: that is, for those of the people [they directed] and for those of the nobles and the magistrates (or officials of justice). The nobles and the officials of justice will be punished for the faults of the people; the latter will be judged just for their own faults.

"Misfortunes are ready to fall upon the Church because there is more justice among soldiers than among priests, and of all states of life in the world, the priests are those who most populate Hell.

"The Bishops will have to answer for all their sheep in a prodigiously exact way."

Benefices are things very dangerous for salvation. It is necessary to carefully avoid accepting persons without vocations into religious orders. To accumulate benefices, to enrich oneself with the goods of the Church, which should not be used except for the poor and the strict necessities of worship and its servants, is one of the most abominable sins. To dispute about these goods and argue over them gives a terrible scandal.

NOW in somewhat defense of these priests today let me explain something many Catholics do not know.
Priests Belong to the Learning Church
There is a common mistake being made today by lay people: It is to consider that the priests belong to the Teaching Church – Ecclesia Docens. They do not. They belong to the Learning Church – Ecclesia Discens – and are part of the faithful. Ecclesia Docens is constituted only by the Pope and Bishops. The other members of the Catholic Church constitute the faithful.

This is clearly explained in the Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology by Card. Pietro Parente, Msgr. Antonio Piolanti and Msgr. Salvatore Garofalo.

Parente, Piolanti & Garofalo

"Ecclesia discens" (Learning Church) (Latin discere = to learn) – That part of the members of the Church which consists of subjects. The Church is a society of unequals, in which by divine right some are superiors (the Pope and the Bishops) and have the authority of teaching, while the others are subjects (all the other faithful) and have the obligation of accepting the teaching of Faith and Morals imparted by the legitimate pastors. Hence the theological distinction of Ecclesia docens (teaching Church – Pope and Bishops) and Ecclesia discens (learning Church – the other faithful).

Even the priests, while they indeed have care of the souls, like parish priests, belong to the Ecclesia discens, although the Bishops ordinarily use their priests in the service of teaching the divine word; the Bishops are teachers by virtue of their function, while the priests are such only by participation and delegation.

Moreover, the Bishops, united with the Pope in their teaching, enjoy active infallibility (infallibility in teaching). The faithful, insofar as they are recipients of this teaching and assimilate the doctrine without error, enjoy a sort of reflex infallibility, called by the theologians passive infallibility (infallibility in believing).