During 4:00 mass on July 28, I started my homily telling the congregation that I had a pounding headache, felt like I was going to throw-up and I wanted to cry. This was all brought about by the Theodore Cardinal McCarrick sexual abuse revelations added to the Honduran auxiliary bishop sex with seminarians revelation. It looks like both men have used their respective seminaries as their own private harems. Ug!   During the Eucharistic prayer at the 4:00 mass I did actually cry. After mass I did not greet the people but retreated into the priest’s sacristy to be alone.  At the 5:30 mass I just had the pounding headache and there were no tears.  The next day at the 8:30 mass I was just angry.

I said in the homily ad. nauseum, don’t leave the Church due to some men’s embracing evil, we have the true presence of Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity in every crumb of the Eucharist… Don’t let anyone chase you away from that because that is what Satan wants.

This week it seems to have gotten worse because of the denials, that seem like lies to the average person, coming from other USA prelates. Ug again!  This time I had 4:00, 5:30 then Sunday 8:30 and 10:00  mass’.  So again I was telling the congregation that just because priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals of the Catholic Church have embraced evil, (not all of us), it does not mean the Church is evil.  The Church is about God. God is bigger than these men. If they choose to be hypocrites they will answer to God.  We too will have to answer to God.  And since not all denominations are the same and the Catholic Church is the one true Church. Don’t leave.

I realize that the decision to leave the Church is a kneejerk reaction to the hierarchy’s sinfulness and it is itself sinful.  This is why acting on emotion is dangerous. Why give up the true presence?  My emotional response was the desire to take all the bishops in the country, line them up against a wall, and shoot them. A sinful thought I know. I did go to reconciliation.  After that it did become clear to me that since I really have no power to correct this it is a waste of time and an occasion of sin to dwell on it.  My worry, anger, angst will not change time.  I cannot go into the past and make these men love and embrace truth. I cannot make them realize their hypocrisy.  I cannot make them live the gospel or chose the right thing. (For the record I can’t make myself live the gospel sometimes.  That is sin.) We are all sinners, all of us. And we can’t let sinners drive us away from the Church.  We can’t let sinners keep us from the true presence in the Eucharist.   So, I choose not to dwell on the wretchedness of men who are supposed to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and dwell on my own walk with God instead.

This in no way excuses what has been done, the abuse and multiple cover-ups, it just makes it more aggravating.  Men that should know better, men that should live the gospel, men that we call shepherds seem to have chosen earthly pleasures that lead to an eternity of damnation over the supernatural pleasures that lead to eternity with God. Using them as our guides we should not make the same mistake. Since God can write straight with crooked lines they are doing a perversion of their job as shepherds in showing all of us what not to do.

Don’t leave. Don’t abandon the true presence of God in the Eucharist.