There’s no Conspiracy

A reader writes:

i have seen you on ewtn, and have some of your books. thanks for your great work.

i just realized that both Fr. Corapi and Fr. Frank Pavone spoke to the people on that fateful day at Notre Dame University, where Pres. Obama was being honored. thought it was interesting to note…

i truly hope that things turn out well for fr. frank…..he is a powerful voice for the vunerable and the unborn. i have never seen anyone else out there quite as passionate to champion that cause……….

i also just hope this is not a deliberate shakedown of television priests……. perhaps there should be a diocese just for public media clergy and religious……. how the heck is the Church going to evangelize with media, if they are taking them out one by one?

probably i am just letting my imagination run away with me……….

keep up the good work!

Thanks for your kind words. Thanks be to God for his goodness to us.

Re: Corapi/Pavone and others. There’s no conspiracy. These guys have destroyed themselves. Nobody’s “taking them out”. They are taking themselves out by various means, but all having to do with pride in the end, expressing itself in different self-destructive ways. Instead of looking for non-existenT conspiracies, we should take a good hard look at the lack of discernment *we* have displayed in repeatedly anointing folk heroes and defending them from legitimate concerns and investigation. From Maciel to Euteneuer to Corapi to Pavone, what has tended to happen is that legitimate concerns are raised and then we laity go to work blaming the person raising the concern as part of some supposed effort to “take them out” instead of looking at the concerns being raised and assuming the good faith of the person raising those concernS. We are so enamored of folk heros, we even do this to a good bishop like Mulvey who insisted on investigating Corapi (and got torrents of abuse and false accusation for his troubles) and the bishop of Amarillo, who is being vindicated in his concerns about Fr. Pavone with each tweet and protest Fr. Pavone makes. The priesthood is not a prison, shackle or inconvenience and for Fr. Pavone to keep treating it as such only makes the good bishop’s point that he has allowed the prolife movement to supercede his priestly vows.

It is notable that nobody is criticizing Fr. Barron, Fr. Pacwa or various other fine priests on the tube. That is because, again, there is no conspiracy. Just an unfortunate tendency for us humans to fail in our fidelity in various ways. These guys are living their priesthood well, so they are not encountering the difficulties that priests who do not live their priesthood well encounter.

Please pray for all these men. They need it. As do we all.

Thanks for your thoughtful concern for our priests.