Vortex: Our Bishops in Peril

Ezekiel 33:8-9 says:

When I say to the wicked, “You wicked, you must die,” and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life.

Whenever I think about it in those terms, I find it easier to “speak up” when I see a friend or loved one making a big mistake. This scripture was what spurred me on to make a lunch date with a woman who, having just been received into the Catholic Church, was making plans to marry outside the Church. With Ezekiel’s words echoing in my mind, I explained to her why she would be in mortal sin if she carried through with her plans. The same thing was true when our granddaughter decided to marry outside the Church (the bigger problem being that she had decided that she was no longer Catholic!). Because I do this sort of thing, I’m not very popular amongst my extended family members, but I’m more concerned about saving souls – including my own! – than I am about their opinion.

I think the human tendency is to avoid such “confrontation”. And yet, we clearly are our brothers’ keepers, and it is not an act of charity to turn a blind eye to the sins of others. If you saw a person about to jump off a cliff to his death, would you not try to stop him?!

This is what Michael Voris is talking about in the June 6 Vortex episode. Bishops, he reminds us, are held to a greater standard than the rest of us; God has given them authority over our souls, and so they also have greater responsibility for their actions (or their failure to act).

Voris says (my emphases):

Because all the responsibility for teaching and governing rests with the bishops, they are the ones in greatest peril of their souls – no doubt about it. They are the leaders, and because of that simple fact, they are judged by an entirely different standard. A leader does not get judged by the same standard as a rank and file member.

Imagine the absurdity of giving a man all the power, but none of the responsibility for the consequences of his decisions. For this reason, when one looks around the Church these days, is it really an unreasonable question to ask: could many of the bishops be on the road to Hell?

If we really think about a bishop in hell – as Voris urges us to do – we can get a sense of the enormity of the situation. The problem is that we aren’t reminded enough of the reality of hell, so we lose sight of the fact that souls are actually going there – and some are going there because of the failure of our bishops to teach rightly and clearly and loudly on the truths of the faith. 

There is a solution: prayer and penance. I think it is important to speak up when a bishop says something clearly against the teachings of the Church (for instance, retired Bishop Gumbleton of the Archdiocese of Detroit speaking directly against Church teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual behavior). But more important, we should pray for all bishops, who bear this huge responsibility for our souls. To that end, ChurchMilitant.TV provided a link to the American Life League’s website, where there is a “pledge” page, wherein the faithful are encouraged to offer prayer and sacrifice for our bishops. 

The script (my emphases):

Our Blessed Lord established His Church so that the responsibility for it would lay in the hands of the apostles and their successors – the bishops. They have all the responsibility which is why they have all the authority. The laity have no real authority in the Church – whatever SOME laity may have comes to them from the good graces of their bishop.

Because all the responsibility for teaching and governing rests with the bishops, they are the ones in greatest peril of their souls – no doubt about it. They are the leaders, and because of that simple fact, they are judged by an entirely different standard. A leader does not get judged by the same standard as a rank and file member.

Imagine the absurdity of giving a man all the power, but none of the responsibility for the consequences of his decisions. For this reason, when one looks around the Church these days, is it really an unreasonable question to ask: could many of the bishops be on the road to Hell?

This question is asked in all charity for their salvation. Think about it: in just America alone more than half of Catholics have left the Church – more than 30 million. 30 MILLION!!

Of those still in the Church – a t least technically still in the Church – many ignore the

Church’s teaching on everyday issues or morality, deny one or more dogmas of the faith like the Real Presence or the superiority of the Catholic Faith for starters.

True…it was not today’s bishops who set these wheels in motion; many of them were just simple seminarians when all this madness began and they were schooled in it. But while they didn’t set the wheels in motion, many of them have kept those wheels rolling.

They allow dissident speakers to speak on church property; they allow them to get awards and honors; they seek after a distorted view of ecumenism (if it can even be called that); they marginalize or silence orthodox priests; they allow liberal priests to remain in charge of parishes – priests who THEY KNOW are not being faithful to the magisterial teachings and are leading souls into confusion and indifference; they will not speak at length on the spiritual realities like sin and hell and the devil, but pay lobbyists to promote public policy on immigration and the environment and gun control and the canard of religious freedom.

Rarely if ever do you hear a bishop talk about souls going to hell. Rarely if ever do you hear a bishop denouncing and decrying contraception. You could wait a month of Sundays before you will hear a bishop say that the Catholic Church and ONLY the Catholic Church was established by Jesus Christ and is the only ONE TRUE FAITH.

Too many of them speak in half-truths, duck the hard issues, hide behind labels of charity and prudence, ignore the reality and consequences of their cowardice and rebellion, and sit back and watch the destruction continue to implode the Church.

Only these men have the authority to begin to reverse this destruction. They can purge the disloyal priests from their charge; take charge of the education system in their diocese by firing teachers and administrators who will not adhere to the teachings of the Church; they can by the stroke of a pen begin to end the flood of liturgical abuses at parishes Masses each week.

There is so much they can do… and their refusal to do any of it does not bode well for them when they come before the throne of Jesus Christ. How can it? He has given them charge to tend to HIS sheep – not their sheep… HIS sheep. And what do they allow – the wolves free access, in the classrooms, pulpits, seminaries, RCIA classes, etc. Their power is singular – to protect the sheep. If they do not do this, what else would common sense dictate OTHER THAN their own damnation?

Think for a moment of the horrible terrible scene of a bishop who dies, who in this life was popular in the eyes of man for something OTHER than his holiness. He placed his own ambitions above the will of God; he sought after the praise of men and would not disgruntle them by announcing the hard sayings of Our Lord.

And here he now stands, his soul bare naked in the glaring light of truth; and he hears judgment passed on him that he is damned; and just before he descends into the pit, he is shown all those souls who on his watch were damned because of his lack of love for them.

It will no longer matter that he was a cardinal or bishop who people often had a good word for. The words he will now hear – for eternity – will be the curses of those who perished on his watch because he did nothing to save them. They will throw in his face as they tear him to shreds the mockery of his trying to please men with talk of immigration reform and social justice and gun control and a host of other earth bound measures that will be burned up in the fires of hell.

He will be forever a slave of the demons who now doubt will have special tortures reserved for the heirs of the Apostles. The pains of the damned are beyond description for the LOWLIEST of the baptized; imagine what they are like for those exalted with the fullness of the priesthood.

Would a bishop who had the courage to declare war on the unfaithful in his diocese – in his own chancery – even be crucified by those same men and women? Sure, almost without a doubt. His fate at the hands of the liberal modernist establishment might very often seem unbearable. But in suffering so, he will save his own soul and the souls of many others. This is the rule for every Catholic… bishop and layman.

But for the bishop, failing to do this holds a special torture in the dungeons and prisons of hell precisely because SO MANY others are there because of HIS actions and inactions.

The pains of Hell are beyond compare. St. Augustine once said in fact that the fires of hell are so intense that trying to understand them in relation to the fires of earth would be like trying to understanding the pain of earthly fire by looking at a painting of fire. It would only make sense that the pain a bishop would suffer in hell would be among the worst of all human beings because of his former noble standing.

Our good friends over at American Life League have put together a pledge-website that we have linked to here to encourage Catholics to pray and fast specifically for the bishops – that they might be strong shepherds for us, and in the process be preserved from eternal damnation.

Please click on the link and consider a sacrifice for the men in so great a need: a bishop in Hell…tortured by demons and ripped and torn at by the souls of those he should have tried to save…and it never ends.