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<\/a><\/div>\nThis is part II of a three part series of sermons by Fr. Cornelius Joseph O\u2019Connell on the ever-persecuted Church. Today, the good priest turns his attention to persecution inflicted by members of the Church. That is, until they break away and leave the barque of St. Peter. Remember that line by the character \u201cChef\u201d in the movie Apocalypse Now?<\/b> \u201cNever get off the boat!\u201d<\/i> How do you know if you\u2019re are staying \u201cin the boat?\u201d Well, what does the Church say?<\/a> She really doesn\u2019t keep her opinions secret, you know. She\u2019s pretty bold about sharing them with the world, which is why she is persecuted in the first place<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this section, Fr. O\u2019Connell spells out some of the major historical heresies that have plagued the Church in the past. New ones arise constantly, as they have from the beginning. That is why St. John the Apostle mentions the Antichrist repeatedly in his letters.<\/a> So let\u2019s take a look at what Fr. O\u2019Connell say about the persecutors within the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n The Catholic Church, the Ever Persecuted and Suffering Spouse of Christ<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.\u201d\u2014Matthew, 16:18.<\/i><\/p>\n Part II: Heresy<\/b><\/p>\n But the really heart-rending affliction to the Church has not been persecution but heresy. The utmost her persecutors can ever do with all their ingenuity of torment, is, to kill the body; while heresy pierces into her soul and life. It is her own children who invented this species of adversity; and hence she may say of herself in the words of her bruised ancf, wounded Redeemer, \u201cThese wounds I have received; in the house of my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course she has triumphed over her enemies of every sort. But, in this case, it was to her as the triumph of David over Absalom, when that parent wept and cried out in his grief: \u201cOh Absalom! my son, Absalom! would to God that I might die for thee.\u201d<\/p>\n What heresy is we may perhaps best understand from an example taken out of the Holy Scriptures. We there read of the crowds that followed our Savior everywhere, and who were all in admiration of His This admiration and docility continued until He came to tell them that \u201cHe was the living bread that came down from heaven.\u201d Here they began to murmur and to question: \u201cIs not this,\u201d said they, \u201cJesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then, saith He, \u2018I come down from heaven?'\u201d A little further on, in the same discourse, He told them that He would give them His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. This statement also they subjected to their own judgment, and settled it by declaring it was a \u201chard saying,\u201d and one not to be listened to. The Scripture here adds that many of them went \u201cback and walked no more with Jesus.\u201d They had already fully accepted and praised His sermon on the mount, and His other doctrines up to this, but here they balked; here they questioned His power to do what He said, for they asked, \u201cHow can this man give us His flesh to eat?\u201d And so retaining what they had already admired of His truth, they left Jesus and the remainder of His doctrine to those who cared still to follow Him and to believe Him.<\/p>\n That the Divine Teacher saw them depart with sorrow is manifest from what follows. \u201cThen Jesus said to the twelve, will you also go away?\u201d And Simon Peter answered Him: \u201cLord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.\u201d In that trying moment He found His only consolation in the fidelity of His chosen twelve, and in their firm, open confession that His words, whatever they might be, are the \u201cWords of eternal life,\u201d and accordingly that whoever turns away from them puts his feet in the way of death. These words of life were then coming, not through any appointed channel as they come to us, but were issuing directly from their divine source, out of the very mouth of the Son of God. For them to be gainsaid under such circumstances, tells at once the essential arrogance of heresy, and forecasts all the miseries it was doomed to bring upon the Church.<\/p>\n Every heresy that has rent the Church has done no more than copy this heresy, originating in the company of His own followers. In her are now deposited all His words of eternal life. To her has been given dominion of all nations, to teach them all things whatsoever he commanded. \u201cAs the Father sent me, so I also send you.\u201d Now, as Christ was sent into the world to teach among other things; that He was the living bread from heaven, so His Church has received from Him and put in the body of her teaching, the doctrines of the divinity of Christ; of His Incarnation; of original sin; of the necessity of grace; of His real presence in the Blessed Eucharist, and the truth of the supreme authority of the Church in the matters of faith and morals. All these truths she received and was sent to teach, and she taught them from the first, and teaches them still.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, as she passed through the nations on her mission, there arose among her followers, men who thought one or other of these doctrines \u201ca hard saying,\u201d and who, accordingly, turned away and walked no more with her. Thus, Arius went out from her, vaunting aloud that he had discovered an error in the Church\u2019s doctrine, namely, that Christ was not the Son of God, but only a creature made by God.<\/p>\n The deplorable part is, that there were numbers to believe that Arius was right and the Church altogether wrong.\u00a0Such multitudes, indeed, were perverted, that whole provinces in the domain of the Church were, for years and years, made black and barren with this outrageous and pestilent heresy. And all this time the Church was doomed to look on and see it everywhere, giving new death to thousands on thousands who had received life in the resurrection of Christ, the Son of God.<\/p>\n
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But it\u2019s tempting to grab control of the tiller in the midst of the storm. By not steering, see, you give up your autonomy, and with faith only in yourself, you delude yourself that you could do this better on your own. You can pilot the ship better, you say to yourself. Of course, what you wind up doing is pulling what St. Peter did when he saw Christ walking on the water. Instead of staying in the boat and waiting for the Master, you walk out towards Him, only to succumb and to founder. Better to be tied to the mast like Odysseus, than listen to that song of the Siren.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
doctrine, because, as they said, He was teaching them as one having power and not as the Scribes and Pharisees.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n