NOTICE: This post was originally the very first post that I ever did for my blog (4/12). I light of Benedict XVI's resignation, I thought it apt to re-present this post. The original video was taken down from YouTube, to see the full vid, click here.

An excellent example of why I started this blog. MSNBC anchor, Lawrence O’ Donnell, attempts to showcase the Catholic Church in a negative light. He not only attacks the Pope but defends a borderline heretical dissident priest in his quest to undo the teachings of the Catholic Church. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long post.

Pope Benedict the XVI earned the name “God’s Rottweiler” according to the New York Times…”

STOP! Mr. O’ Donnell, wouldn’t be mentioning the same New York Times that recently refused to place an anti-Islamic ad in its newspaper but, opted instead, to run an anti-Catholic ad in its place? Yeah, I think the NYT would be the last place I’d look for unbiased information about Catholicism.

What Mr. O’ Donnell hasn’t told you about is the outright liturgical abuses that have come from Austrian dioceses over the last couple of years. Indeed, it could be seen as a hotbed of heretical behavior, from priestless Masses celebrated by lay people, to Country/Western themed outdoor BBQ-style Mass complete with beer, food and cigarettes, and, more recently, a cardinal overruled a local priest’s decision to not have an openly gay man, who lives in a “registered domestic partnership,” not be part of his parish council.

Since it’s obvious that Mr. O’Donnell has no grip with Church teaching, let’s see what the Church says about these 3 heretical “reforms” that have been put forward by these band of dissident priests. Why can’t women be priestesses (is that even the politically correct term)? CCC #1577 states in part:

“Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination. The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops…makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.”

Going back two sections we also read that in #1575-1567 (with my emphasis):

“Christ himself chose the apostles and gave them a share in his mission and authority…Thus, it is Christ whose gift it is that some be apostles, others pastors. He continues to act through the bishops. Since the sacrament of Holy Orders is the sacrament of the apostolic ministry, it is for the bishops as the successors of the apostles to hand on the "gift of the Spirit,” The "apostolic line." Validly ordained bishops, i.e., those who are in the line of apostolic succession, validly confer the three degrees of the sacrament of Holy Orders.”

In other words Mr. O ‘ Donnell, ONLY A BISHOP MAY ORDAIN ANOTHER MAN TO THE PRIESTHOOD. It called Apostolic Tradition, we Catholics are big on it because we’re the only Christian church that has it.

As for priest being able to get married well, they are, to the church. Any good Catholic will notice that a priest wears a ring on his left hand “ring finger,” this is supposed to symbolize the marriage between the priest and the Church – or, as the Catholic Church and many other Christian theologians call her – the “Bride of Christ.” Living a chaste lifestyle is done to imitate the life of Jesus and to sacrifice the married life for “sake of the Kingdom” (See Lk 18:28-30, Mt 19:27-30, Mk 10:20-21). Additionally, it’s not only priests who are called to live a chaste lifestyle put ALL Christians!

Lastly, as for divorced and remarried people who’ve never had an annulment, this is not going to happen. To begin with, MARRIAGE IS A SACRAMENT, this must’ve been lost in Mr. O’ Donnell’s Catholic High School education. As such, it must be treated with the due respect and honor it deserves since it was Christ Himself who instituted it as a Sacrament. In order for the Catholic Church to rescind the validity of this Sacrament and consider it null, there has to be insufficiency or inadequacy of judgment (also known as lack of due discretion, due to some factor such as young age, pressure to marry in haste, etc.), psychological incapacity, and absence of a proper intention to have children, be faithful, or remain together until death (See Canon 1095).

In other words, just because you decided you don’t want to be married anymore doesn’t constitute an annulment or, just because things “got rough” in your marriage, doesn’t constitute an annulment. It’s a Sacrament people! But, in order to have idiots like O’ Donnell understand, I’ll ask a simple question: “Can you get ‘un-baptized?’ That is, can the gift of grace bestowed at baptism be undone?”  The answer is no, for the most part the Catholic Church recognizes most of all Protestant baptisms as being valid, since Baptism is a Sacrament, there is no need to re-baptize a person who converts from Protestantism to Catholism (See Canon 869).

Now, apply this to the Sacrament of Marriage, just because the secular world finds it okay to marry and remarry and divorce at the whim of one or both spouses, does not mean that the truth of Christ’s True Church can simply be ignored, deferred or done away with? Can the grace – if it truly was there – of marriage simply be ignored, deferred or undone simply because a couple doesn’t want to acknowledge it? The answer is no.

It is thus very pivotal that the Catholic Church is so conservative with her view of marriage, people like Reverend Schuller and Mr. O’ Donnell would simply love it if the Catholic Church allowed it’s priest to simply give away Communion to those laypersons whom have simply given away the grace of marriage. Why, you may ask? Simply put: if the Catholic Church changes its stance and gives Holy Communion to remarried “catholics” whom have not gotten an annulment, AND THUS LIVING IN SIN, then what is to stop the church from giving Communion to openly cohabitating heterosexual couples or same-sex couples? It is precisely because she puts so much emphasis on the holiness of matrimony that so many anti-Catholics want her to change her teachings in order to justify many tenets of modernism.

“..the ban on women priest and the ban on priest marrying is not, in his words, ‘a matter of theology but of history and Tradition and those are constantly evolving.’ ”

Really? Then history has nothing to do with the Catholic Church? I mean, it’s only the oldest institution in the Western World, surely its history must have some influence in its teachings, right? Oh, no! There’s that word again, “Tradition!” Damn you Catholics! Why can’t you stop being so traditionalist and start being more modern? Once again, it’s not like Tradition (especially Apostolic Tradition) has anything to do with Church teachings, right?

If in fact these are constantly evolving, show me where, when and how they evolved from something old to something new. I also find it rather interesting that this statement were the words of the dissident priest AND NOT OF THE VATICAN! This priest, although he can question Church Doctrine has absolutely no authority to disavow any of the Church’s teachings because he personally deems it unworthy. This is where I facepalm myself.

“…he [the Pope] did not cite any authority from the Lord forbidding women priests.”

Okay, here we go. Let it be understood that the Catholic Church DOES NOT HAVE authority to ordain priestesses (is that politically correct?). CCC# 1578 states (with my emphasis & comments) :

“No one has a right to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God. Anyone who thinks he (or in this case she) recognizes the signs of God's call to the ordained ministry must humbly submit his desire to the authority of the Church, who has the responsibility and right to call someone to receive orders. Like every grace this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift.”

You hear that Mr. O’ Donnell? The priesthood isn’t a right for women, it is an unmerited gift sacramentally given to those THAT GOD CALLS TO BE PRIEST IN HIS CATHOLIC CHRUCH! Just because a woman wants to be a priestess, doesn’t mean that God has chosen her to be one – this isn’t a case of equality but a case of the will of the Lord.  As Peter Kreeft puts it:

“The Catholic priesthood was not the first priesthood that God invented, He created two others before it: the Levitical priesthood, which was set aside and vanquished by Christ and, the priesthood of Melchizedek which was fulfilled by Christ. Just as the Jews were not free to institute priestesses, neither are Catholics because no one can choose, much less demand, a priesthood; for it was Christ who said: “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you,”with those words the case is closed. The chosen people did not establish the Jewish priesthood it was established by the Supreme Being; did God then discriminate against the other 11 tribes because they weren’t Levites?  Of course not, that’s an absurdity because God picks his priests and they serve at his pleasure.”

“Many Catholics…have been watching with worry the dramatic decline of the number of priest, especially in the United States were the number of priests has declined by a third since 1975…”

- Number of priest has increased since 2000 from 405,178 to 408,024 in 2007.

- As of December 2010, the number of bishops in the world increased from 5,065 to 5,104; the number of priests went from 410,593 to 412,236, increasing everywhere except Europe.

- The number of priests have increased from 2009 to 2010 by a total of 1,643 units. The increases are recorded in Asia (+1,695 priests), in Africa (+761), Oceania (with +52) and America (with +40 units), while the decline has affected Europe (with -905 priests).

- New religious vocations are being filled by younger and better educated men and women.

The Wall Street Journal recently stated in an article that, “…today the number of priestly ordinations is steadily increasing…There were 467 new priestly ordinations in the U.S. last year, according to a survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, up from  442 a decade ago.”

“Father Schuller insists that rewriting the rules of the priesthood – liberalizing those rules – is necessary for the very survival of the priesthood and, therefore, the survival of the Church…”

How naïve, Apparently, Mr. O’ Donnell has never heard about the failed experiment to “liberalize” Anglicanism. The Anglican Church started ordaining women priest, they have married clergy, they have ordained an openly gay bishop, they allow Holy Communion (or whatever form they believe it to be) to divorcees, they allow their faithful to use contraception and, there is currently a big brouhaha over the ordination of women as bishops. Seems to be the very model of what Mr. O’ Donnell wants the Catholic Church to be like, right? Too bad that the Anglican Church has been literally cut in half because of these liberal rules! It got so bad that in 1980, Blessed Pope John Paul II established a pastoral provision for Anglican priests who wished to become priests in full communion with Rome. In January of 2010, Pope Benedict XVI officially established the Anglican Ordinariate in the United States as a refuge for disenfranchised Anglicans, more recently, 2 Canadian Anglican bishops entered into communion with Rome via the Ordinariate and, an Anglican Vicar converted to Catholicism and took half of his congregation with him, saying, “it just seems that everything has come up for grabs…Those of us who believed in traditional values and opposed the ordination of women and other innovations, who were once an honoured and valued part of the C of E (Church of England), are now just being told to ‘sod off’. That’s the bottom line.”

“Father Schuller’s critizism of the Church’s rules is aimed at strengthening  the Catholic Church, not weakening it…”

See above.

“…and it follows a rich history of such criticism, of the catholic church , from within the catholic church.”

Like Martin Luther, who was a Catholic Monk, or Huldrych Zwingli as well as Jan Hus who were both Catholic priests, right? Yes, their concentrated efforts did more to divide the Body of Christ then to keep it whole. Mr. O’ Donnell wouldn’t be trying to suggest breaking the Body of Christ into more Christian segments then there already are, would he? WHY wouldn’t he?

“The first married priests and the first women pope will owe prayers of thanks to Father Helmut.”

Highly unlikely but, if it were to come to pass, I doubt Father Helmut would be the one to thank. Instead, I suggest this verse:

You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.  – John 8:45