One of the most despicable things one person can do to another is place unjustified doubts into his mind. And when those doubts pertain to matters of the Faith, it moves from cruel to sinful.
Yet this is precisely what many bishops do with not only with their sheep, but their priests. Most people don't really consider this aspect of the corruption of the hierarchy, the self-doubts that begin to arise in the hearts and minds of priests when their bishop brutalizes them psychologically.
Every man has a different breaking point. For a variety of reasons, some reach that breaking point sooner than others. Consider — a young man goes into seminary and discerns he should become a priest. He's faithful and believes the Church's teaching. All well and good. But, as nearly everyone is, he is a product of his time. And, for a younger man, that generally means psychologically weak, or at least weaker than you would want in a priest.
It would be very difficult for a young male, even one considering priesthood and eventually getting ordained, to have escaped the drumming into his mind by the culture that "authentic manhood is bad." The cultural messaging, as well as inside the Church, is that the more a young male thinks like (and responds like) a woman, the better.
He's been conditioned by every institution since he was a child to be something other than he is naturally. He's been encouraged to be self-indulgent, non-sacrificing, lazy, self-absorbed. This is happening all over the cultural landscape. Areas traditionally viewed as ruggedly masculine — the military and athletics, certainly. And the priesthood is no exception.
So oftentimes, when a young man gets ordained these days, he may be "nice" and all that. But is he strong psychologically? Will he, for example, be able to withstand the withering attacks he will receive when he stands in his pulpit and tells the whole truth of the Faith? Will he even stand in the pulpit and do so — because, frankly, if he doesn't, what's the point of being ordained in the first place?
Some have even questioned the Faith itself.
But let's take the more rare case of the priest who, first, knows the full truth of the Faith, has the courage to announce it and, then, suffers the recriminations of his flock for doing so. Church Militant, because of what we do, has the opportunity to talk to these types of priests more often than you might think.
They usually end up sidelined by their bishops because their bishops are the exact type of pansy-minded weaklings that the culture has produced and loves. So when one of these types of bishops has a priest who tells the truth, they ice him. And here's where the problems arise of the mental toughness of the priest.
Not a few begin to experience doubts, self-doubts. Perhaps not immediately — but certainly eventually. And those doubts begin to multiply because, frequently, these priests are pretty much alone.
Given the shortage of priests overall and dominant shortage of believing priests (and even more acute shortage of psychologically strong priests among them), being iced by your bishop, or even marginalized, can begin to raise all sorts of doubts and questions in the mind of such a man.
For example, given the combination of isolation and self-doubt, he can begin to question whether he was ever supposed to be ordained. In truth, it could be the case that he shouldn't have been. Not every man who receives Holy Orders should have, just as not every man consecrated a bishop should have been.
But other men, men who are products of their time and who run afoul of their bishop or superior, begin to crumble in their minds. As an analogy, this sometimes occurs in marriages. Sadly, some sets of circumstances arise where the marriage (at least for a spell) is unworkable and the couple needs to separate and live apart. They're still married, sacramentally, but they can't be under the same roof.
But, for the priest, something like that isn't really an option. He is a priest, and he can't just "live apart" from his identity. He is, in fact, a priest forever. Marriage ends at death. His priesthood does not.
He knows this, and that reality adds to the suffering and self-doubt. Has he done something against the will of God in getting ordained? He didn't deliberately violate the will of God, but that may be of little comfort now. If he did choose something that God had not willed for him, should he seek laicization? How does he know with any certainty now if he couldn't possess sufficient certainty then?
What if the opposite is true — that it was the will of God for him to be ordained and (now) he is just demonstrating spiritual weakness and would be violating God's will by leaving? These plaguing questions go through these men's minds and give them no rest, and we know because we talk to them.
How truly horrible have things gotten in the Church? Well, the very fact that psychologically tortured priests are calling laymen for help should tell you a lot. Some have even questioned the Faith itself — faced, as they are, with such horrible men in authority over them.
One priest I was speaking with recently whose early career was off to a good start (money, promotion, well-deserved admiration of his peers, all that) said to me he didn't give all that up to end up in his current situation — his current situation being good priest/bad bishop.
Some bishops try to break their good priests, shipping them off to St. Luke's funny farm or other comparable places. In those places are men who should not have been ordained because they were not up to the stuff of priesthood to begin with. They have sex addictions of various sorts and other emotional issues that were never detected — or ignored or even developed while they were in seminary.
Good priests are simply dumped into these places by their bishops to be broken down and "rewired," places meant for the mentally unstable — not good priests as some kind of punishment for telling the truth. Such is the plight of many priests these days, anonymous voices that are never heard.
Last year, in an effort to give voice to their plight, Church Militant began our New Catacombs initiative under our Resistance effort.
New Catacombs allows priests, now numbering in the hundreds, to remain completely anonymous (their identities even hidden by us from each other) and lend their support to statements about current conditions in the Church without fear of reprisal — because their bishop doesn't know they are in the New Catacombs.
Offer some of your penances for good priests.
The point of the endeavor is to give voice to the concerns of good priests over various evils and confusions the hierarchy is doing or allowing — sacrilegious Holy Communion, for example. A core group of a dozen produces periodic statements, and then those statements are passed around for a vote by the general membership of hundreds of other clerics.
In the past few months, here are the topics they've produced statements on:
Pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Communion
Can a Catholic priest bless a homosexual union?
Unjust punishments imposed on Fr. Altman and Fr. Clay
Seminarians being removed for not being vaccinated
Catholics should not support the Catholic Campaign for Human Development
The Synod on Synodality
Catechizing the faithful
Abortion is the no. 1 issueIf you are either a priest or a layman and know a priest who would benefit from this effort, please have him click on the provided link to learn more and join. His identity will be kept by us in complete confidence, and he will know he has the benefit of joining his voice to the voices of hundreds of other priests standing for truth, even if it is anonymously.
In the meantime, this Lent, offer some of your penances for the good priests for whom their bishops have caused serious doubts to arise in their minds. Evil men never have doubts because they are completely committed to their cause, and they have no conscience. Good men are able to be gotten at precisely because they have a conscience. It's why men of goodwill also need to be as tough as nails. Having good intentions is not enough — not in today's world.
You need steely resolve for fending off the attacks that will come — especially those from inside the Church.