THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST SCANDAL

Pastor James J. Barker

Text: MATTHEW 23:9




INTRODUCTION:


  1. If you have been paying attention to the news reports you have heard about the latest wave of Roman Catholic priest sex scandals.
  2. Years ago, I began clipping articles about these scandals but I had to stop for two reasons.  For one thing, it is a very depressing story.  Children that are abused by these priests are normally ruined forever.
  3. They often become homosexuals, drug addicts, and drunkards.  Many are under psychiatric supervision.  Some even commit suicide.
  4. Another reason I stopped was because my file was getting so big!
  5. The pedophile priest crisis has cost the US Roman Catholic church an estimated three billion dollars, but only a small fraction of the perpetrators have gone to prison and little has been done to punish those who covered up the crimes.
  6. One of the few priests who was sentenced to prison was John Geoghan, a Massachusetts priest who sexually abused more than 130 children.   Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his jail cell by a man convicted of murder for killing a homosexual who picked up hitchhiking.
  7. Lately there has been a big uproar over Pope Benedict, because apparently he has been part of the cover-up.  Just the other day, a letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, surfaced. It is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland, California and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of a child-molesting priest named Stephen Kiesle.
  8. The Oakland diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office which shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.
  9. However, Ratzinger ignored their request for four years before he finally responded to them. It then took an additional two more years before the perverted priest was finally removed.
  10. During those six long years, this perverted priest continued to molest little boys.  When he was finally arrested and sentenced to prison, he bragged that he molested “many children.”
  11. After years of these embarrassing revelations and massive payouts, the child sex abuse scandal has spread around the world.
  12. Recently, a Vatican spokesman announced that the pope, accused of being responsible for covering up much of the sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a “head of state” (The Vatican is a sovereign nation.)   What hypocrisy!
  13. The latest scandal to hit the newspapers involves a priest out in Wisconsin who worked in a school for the deaf.  He allegedly molested over 200 boys in this school.  I actually heard a priest interviewed on the radio who scoffed at the reports and said it was “only 100 boys.”
  14. The New York Times reported, “Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit. The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.  The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.  The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger.”
  15. First of all, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been around for a long time, but up until 1965 (at the end of the Second Vatican Council) it was known as the Office of the Inquisition.
  16. Millions of people (many were Christians) were killed during the Inquisition.   It is usually referred to as “the Spanish Inquisition” but the Inquisition executed people all over Europe.
  17. Furthermore, Milwaukee’s archbishop at that time was a man named Rembert G. Weakland.  Weakland was a homosexual who used $450,000 in Catholic church funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual boyfriend who was blackmailing him.
  18. Before moving on, I would like to comment on the hypocrisy of the mainstream media.  They attack the RCC because the RCC does not do enough to protect innocent children from homosexual priests.
  19. But on the other hand, the liberal news media (and liberal politicians) have attacked the Boy Scouts because the Boy Scouts are trying to protect innocent children from homosexual scoutmasters.
  20. They cannot have it both ways.  If pervert priests are bad (and they certainly are), so are perverted boy scouts.
  21. It is well known that the mainstream media is very pro-homosexual, and they have no problem with homosexual pedophiles – except when these pedophiles happen to be RC priests.
  22. Richard Berke, a journalist with the New York Times, and an outspoken homosexual said, “Literally three-quarters of the people deciding what’s on the front page are not-so-closeted homosexuals.”

 

I. THE ENTIRE RC PRIESTHOOD IS UNSCRIPTURAL.

  1. God established a priesthood for Israel in the Old Testament.
  2. But God did not establish a priesthood for the church in the New Testament (I Timothy 3).
  3. Bishops (elders or pastors) are to be “blameless, the husband of one wife” (I Tim. 3:2).  This would disqualify just about every RC priest.
  4. I say “just about,” because there are approximately 100 married men working as priests here in the United States. These men used to be Protestant ministers before they converted to Romanism.
  5. But even if priests were happily married, that would not get at the heart of the problem – the entire RC priesthood is unscriptural.
  6. In the Old Testament, priests offered up sacrifices to God (cf. Ex. 29:10-14).
  7. There is no ritual like that in the New Testament. Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross marked the fulfillment and end of the priestly ordinances of the Old Testament.
  8. John 19:30 says Christ cried out, “It is finished.” And He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.
  9. Hebrews 10:18 says, “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.”
  10. Through His priestly offering on the cross, Christ “by Himself purged our sins” and “sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3; cf. 10:12-14).
  11. Today in the New Testament church we have pastors, not priests – preachers who proclaim the Gospel – the true Gospel, not the false gospel of Rome.
  12. Pastors are also called “bishops” and “elders,” but never priests (cf. Acts 20:17, 28; Titus 1:5-9; I Peter 5:1-4).
  13. By the way, the RCC claims that Peter was their first “pope” but Peter was married (Luke 4:38), was never in Rome, and referred to himself simply as an elder, not as a priest or as a pope (I Peter 5:1-4).
  14. In this dispensation of grace, all believers are priests (I Peter 2: 5, 9; Rev. 1:5, 6).
  15. It is wrong to call a man “Father” in a religious sense (Matt. 23:9).
  16. A priest offers up sacrifices but there are no more sacrifices after Calvary (cf. Heb. 10:10-14).  Today we are to offer up only spiritual sacrifices (Heb. 13:15, 16).
  17. “Forbidding to marry” is a demonic doctrine (I Tim. 4:1-3).
  18. Donald Cozzens is a RC priest, who has written five books on issues and problems of the RC priesthood. He estimates that half of the RC priests and seminarians are homosexual.  He believes changing the celibacy rule will help.
  19. It certainly will help, but it would be far better to abolish the entire unscriptural priesthood!

 

II. THE RC MASS IS UNSCRIPTURAL.

  1. Roman Catholics refer to their worship service as a “mass.”  However, there is no “mass” in the Bible.
  2. Even certain RC marriage ceremonies and funerals are masses.
  3. The Lord’s Supper is not a “mass” (Matthew 26:26-29; I Cor. 11:23-26).
  4. The Bible teaches that the Lord’s Supper is symbolic.  However, the RCC teaches that their priests have the power to transform the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ. 
  5. They call this the doctrine of “transubstantiation” (which means “change of substance”).
  6. Our Lord often used figurative language (cf. John 2:18-22; 3:3, 4; 4:13, 14; 5:33-35; 6:47-51, 63; 7:37-39; etc.).
  7. In fact, we find figurative language all throughout Scripture (cf. II Sam. 23:15-17).
  8. Many Roman Catholics believe the mass is symbolic, and that the priests do not really have the power to change the bread and wine into the literal flesh and blood of Christ.
  9. However, that is not the official position of their church.
  10. The New York Catechism of the RCC says, “Jesus Christ gave us the sacrifice of the Mass to leave to His Church a visible sacrifice which continues His sacrifice on the cross until the end of timeThe Mass is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross.  Holy Communion is the receiving of the body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine” (cited by Loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism).
  11. The Council of Trent was convened by the RCC in the 16th century as an effort to condemn the growing Protestant movement in Europe.
  12. Thy met between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions.  They referred to Protestant criticisms of the mass as “a crime…wrested by certain contentions and wicked men.” 
  13. Referring to the view that the Lord’s Supper is symbolic, the Council of Trent affirmed that Rome “has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men.”

 

III. THE ENTIRE RC SYSTEM IS UNSCRIPTURAL.

  1. Once we see that the Roman Catholic priesthood is unscriptural, and their mass is unscriptural, it is plain to that their entire system is wrong and unscriptural.
  2. Salvation is by God’s grace – not by works or sacraments (Eph. 2:8, 9).
  3. Praying to Mary and other saints is idolatrous (Ex. 20:4-6).
  4. Christ is our only mediator – not Mary or a priest or a pope, etc. (I Tim. 2:5).
  5. Sinners are saved by faith in Christ alone (John 3:16).

 

CONCLUSION:


  1. Richard Bennett was a RC priest for over 20 years.  He studied the Bible and became more and more troubled by the contradiction between the Bible and the teachings of the RCC.
  2. While working as a parish priest in Trinidad, he became convinced the second commandment condemns idolatry – “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Exodus 20:4).
  3. So he removed two statues from his church – one of St. Francis and one of St. Martin.
  4. He was getting ready to remove one of Mary but some members objected and he backed down.
  5. He defended his compromise because the official teaching of the RCC is: “The practice of displaying sacred images in the church for the veneration of the faithful is to remain in force.”
  6. But deep down he knew the RCC was wrong to defy the Word of God.
  7. Then one day he was rebuked by a Christian woman, who said to him, “You Roman Catholics have a form of godliness, but you deny its power.”
  8. It was not long after that when Richard Bennett was gloriously saved.
  9. He understood Ephesians 2:8, 9 and believed it.
  10. He left the RCC, and the Lord gave him a godly Christian wife.
  11. Today he is serving the Lord as a Baptist preacher.
  12. He has preached here in our church several times and has been a blessing to us.


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