Hypocrisy in the Church? NOOOO!
QUESTION?
How do we promote our Catholic faith to family members when there is so Evil going on at the Vatican?
ANSWER!
We are Catholics because Jesus Christ is Our Lord, Savior & God. He started the Catholic Church, its His Bride. I am not a Catholic because of some Pope, Cardinal, Bishop or Priest. They are sinners just like us (Rom 3:23), they come and go and will be judged like us. Our Lord Jesus is 'sinless' (Heb 4:15), Him alone do we worship, serve and follow. Psalm 146:3 "Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save."
These Priests and Bishops at the Vatican are not living up to what the Church teaches. This is hypocrisy on their part? Please don’t stop evangelizing. You are misplacing the blame. If a Priest, religious or layman fails to live up to the standards he is preaching, the blame lies with him and not with the message he preaches. His actions say much about himself but not about the teachings of Christ. Jesus certainly practiced what he preached, but if someone else preaches Jesus message exactly the same but does not practice it perfectly, it is not logical to conclude that the message of Jesus must be flawed. By way of analogy, if it were proven that Albert Einstein was a child molester, that would not disprove the theory of relativity. A system should not be judged by its worst adherents but by its best, those who actually live up to its standards. Judge the Catholic Church by its saints, not by its hypocrites. As Arnold Lunn stated, “The Church is not only the nursery of the saints, but a hospital for sinners.” If being hurt by the Church causes you to lose your faith in God, than your faith was in people and not in God.
There is a great story of St Bernard, who was asked by his Bishop to go to a certain parish and help a certain Priest. The Priest was notoriously bad. He embezzled funds from the Parish. He had a mistress and was an alcoholic. St Bernard tried to help the Priest by setting a good example for him, but it did work. St Bernard tried talking to him, shaming him, even screaming at him but nothing worked. He finally gave up, packed his bags to leave and he made one last visit to the Tabernacle. He said, “I’m sorry Lord, I failed, and now I’m leaving." St Bernard turned and walked down the long aisle. Than from the altar he heard a voice, the voice of Christ in the tabernacle said: “I’m staying.”
Here is what this story tells me: No matter how many corrupt clergy there are, I’m staying. No matter how many liberal modernist dissenting cafeteria Catholics there are, I’m staying. No matter how many leave the ‘Kingdom of God’ on earth, I’m staying. For outside the Catholic Church there is no Holy Eucharist, and the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ – and outside of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.
Not going to Church because of the hypocrites is like not going to the gym because of the out of shape people that go there. Hypocrisy never nullifies the truth. Scripture warns us that there will be false teachers within our Church: "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number” (1John 2:18-19 NAB).
2 Peter 2:1-3 "There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies and even deny the Master who ransomed them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their licentious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. In their greed they will exploit you with fabrications, but from of old their condemnation has not been idle and their destruction does not sleep."