When a General wants to conquer the enemy, where does he send his troops? He usually does not send them against the enemy's impregnable fortress. He will choose the weakest point to attack. The devil knows this quite well, and he uses it against the Church. So then, what would we say is one of the weakest points in the Church? Marriages are certainly weak these days, and we know that he is attacking them. Youth are clearly at risk; anyone can see how frequently they lose their faith. Even with these, I think that there is another part that is terribly weak, and the devil is wanting to exploit it.
For me this hits home quite well, but a "weak" link in the chain that I believe is getting attacked in a horrible way today, and many do not think about it, is the clergy. Forty to fifty years ago, many of the clergy were turning from the Catholic faith in various ways. Some were abandoning their vows and leaving the Church, while others stayed in the Church but turned away from Catholic dogma and began teaching and practicing a protestantized version of the faith. Satan had hit them and made things veer away from the truth. At the same time (as we can now see from the recent run of accusations of events that occurred in the 60's and 70's), the devil spent much of his time tempting clergy into sodomy and other forms of sexual abuse.
Today, however, we find a growing surge of more solid priests who hold the faith firmly, and are seeking to retain the traditions of the Church with a faithful passion. This will frighten the devil. He knows that if the Church has faithful priests who teach and practice the truth, that the Churches will grow and become stronger. So, naturally, he wants to prevent this from happening. How does he prevent it? He works to create new and more sinister forms of temptation for priests and bishops to fall into.
I saw today that a priest in France apparently slapped a baby he was about to baptize who would not stop crying. This is just one more example of the multitude of events that lead people (inside and outside of the Church) to lose trust in priests. I see it all the time: people who say "I used to be Catholic, but quit because of all the scandals". This is not the right response to scandal (for we are always supposed to trust Christ to work through the Church and never the individuals in the Church themselves), but it is certainly understandable.
I regularly feel a deep concern about where the devil will try to tempt me and that makes me stay on my guard. As a priest of God's Church, were I to fall into grave sin I could hurt many others and cause them to fall into a host of other sins as well (such as lack of faith, bitterness, distrust of the Church, or even cause some to cease attending Church!). There is a passage in the Psalms that says "let not those who seek after Thee, O God, fall into sin because of me" (my paraphrase). That is something we do not always think about, but we should. The sins we do can always (even the private ones) cause others to fall into sin.
I gave only one example above, but I am sure that it would not take but a few minutes to find a hundred more in a web search. Deacons, priests, and bishops are all being caught in bad choices and sinful behaviors. In the Old Testament there are a number of different places where the prophets warn that the priests will fall into sin. In those instances, there are always repercussions far beyond the obvious, and it often takes a long time to restore faithfulness to the priests. There are lessons there that we need to consider (and I will speak to those in a future post).
The evil one knows that if he can fracture the leadership in the Church, that it will eventually weaken the laity as well, and this is exactly what he is putting a significant effort into at this time. Priests: it is time to put an extra guard on your souls; seek to deepen your devotion, repent of those sins that you struggle with, and seek the help of your brother priests. People: pray for your priests every day (and for all priests), I beg of you! If we are going to come through these difficult times that we are experiencing, then the Church's spiritual fathers must be strong in what they are doing; they must be wise, and faithful before God. Encourage the faithful priests (in many ways, especially verbally), and lovingly pray for those who are "less than faithful". Together we can do the work of standing firm in this battle.
