En la Calle Recta. A Critical Analysis of Un-Christian Publications.

In these times of ours, marked by a growing interest in dialogue among Christians and by the acknowledgment of the errors of the past, certain “evangelical” circles persist in an outdated anti-Catholic attitude, based more on prejudice than on the reality of things. What follows is a letter addressed to the editors of the publication “En la Calle Recta” (“On the Straight Street,” based in Holland). Its author has followed this magazine for years. He presents here a critical analysis of it. (Editor’s Note)

April 17, 2001

Some years ago now your magazine entitled “La Calle Recta” came into my hands, and I read every issue in full and collect them. For some time I have wished to write to you in order to share my reflections on the publication in question and on the purpose which I believe I see reflected in it. I hereby submit to you the following:

In the first place, I declare to you that I am a Catholic layman who strives always to keep Christ at the center of my life, and I love His Universal or Catholic Church, trying to follow His example, shown in Ephesians 5:25.

In spite of the miseries of my human nature, and aided also by the grace of God, I desire to walk and to persevere on the path of love, of Christian charity, toward all the persons HE permits to cross my path, even when I do not share their religious views — above all toward those who, like you, once exercised the most exalted ministry of the priesthood, by participation in the one priesthood of Christ, in my Catholic Church. And I say “exercised” because now, from what is shown in your magazine, upon your withdrawal from the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, it is logical for me to understand that this is no longer so, perhaps because you consider it useless, meaningless, and possibly even heretical. In any case, for this servant of yours, whatever your attitude, you will remain priests forever. For this sacrament imprints a Character forever.

Nevertheless, although the issues of ECR from various years that I have collected are by now many, I see in all of them one constant common denominator, a closed circle with the same content — so that even if I had read only a single issue, I would have a general picture of all the rest, since in reality ALL of them contain the same positions and omissions, for example:

DOCTRINAL POSITIONS

MOST NOTABLE OMISSIONS

Following upon, and in complement to, what has been set forth above, allow me to make an analysis of the purposes of your Association and of the content of your magazine EN LA CALLE RECTA:

The hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God. Jn 16:2

You must be aware that many of us Catholics are deficient in the knowledge of our faith, though this does not prevent us from loving Christ and His Church. You know likewise that there are many regions of the world where Christ is completely unknown and the work of missionaries is proscribed — for example, communist China, to say nothing of certain Muslim countries where deciding for Christ is paid for with death. Why do you not direct your work, ECR, to those regions? I suppose it seems easier to you to “build upon another man’s foundation,” Rom 15:20, sending ECR where the Catholic Church, with all its deficiencies and achievements, has been laboring for several centuries.

The purpose of your magazine, rather than evangelizing new disciples for Christ, is aimed principally at killing the faith of Catholics in Christ and in His Church. I wish for you that our Just Judge may be merciful with you and your work on the day you appear before Him at the Last Judgment.

“All the chief priests and ancients of the people took counsel against Jesus, that they might put him to death.” Mt 27:1

The Church is Jesus; Christ said it to St. Paul: “why persecutest thou me?” Acts 9:4.

It is sad, and the reason why those of us who know your work ECR are in constant prayer for you, that being priests FOREVER, you are now associated in council, like the priests of the O.T., in the vain attempt to destroy the Universal (Catholic) Church of Christ. As you will see, this — priests delivering Christ to death — has been happening since the first century, and so it will go on happening, in vain, until the Parousia of the Lord.

During the French Revolution (late eighteenth century), several ex-priests, after betraying Christ and His Church, became fierce enemies of Him and of His Church. They branded Christ the “tyrant of souls”; they took part in blasphemous festivals inside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, where a donkey was dressed in priestly vestments and made to drink water from the chalice of the Mass, and the Missal and the Bible were hung from its tail. They witnessed and approved the toppling of the image of the Virgin Mary from the cathedral’s altar, and the placing in its stead of the throne of the goddess Reason, personified by a beautiful young woman crowned with garlands.

An ex-priest named Joseph Lebon was so bloodthirsty that, acting as a commissioner of the revolutionaries, he would station an orchestra of musicians beside the guillotine to mock his victims before executing them — to say nothing of what Joseph Fouché, another ex-religious of the period, did.

By contrast, 17 Carmelite religious, having offered themselves as victims to the Most High so that this orgy might end and France cease to drink the blood of her children, died as martyrs on the guillotine; and 7 days later the ferocious Robespierre himself, together with several of his henchmen, fell under the same guillotine to which they had sent so many innocent people to their death, and with that the Reign of Terror came to an end.

The Church, the bride of Christ, was reborn in France, purified of her failings and glorious in her martyrs. God Himself permitted the Virgin Mary to appear at Lourdes, and there began in that place the endless series of miracles acknowledged throughout the world, even by non-Catholics.

Once again the words of Jesus come true: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” Mt 16:18.

A simple village priest, shortly afterwards, said to the celebrated Napoleon: “not even we priests, with our sins, have been able to destroy her — much less will you.” Will the work of ECR succeed?

For whoever wishes to create a true Church, the formula is this: “Die on a Friday and rise again on a Sunday.”

I mention all this because, given your condition as priests, your hands anointed with the holy oil, and considering the foregoing, you will be able to understand it and to reflect that the work you carry out, precisely because of that condition, makes all the more terrible the impact you cause upon the simple souls who have the misfortune of reading your publication ECR — as happened in their day with the French ex-priests, who managed to drag along behind them many apostates, converted to the revolutionary ideas, who afterwards, without scruple of conscience, committed atrocious crimes.

How terrible and sad it is to see priests of Christ, who once took into their hands the chalice with His blood before the assembly of the faithful, now take up the pen to write against Him and His Church!

In the face of the great sins that the souls consecrated to God in His Church have committed, do commit, and will commit, we ought to remember the attitude of the holy spouses St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary, who, knowing the failings of the priests of their time — the very ones who would one day hand over her Son to the death of the cross — never apostatized, nor withdrew from the worship over which those priests presided in the Temple of Jerusalem or in the synagogues; rather, they bore in mind that that Church, or caste of priests, unworthy though they were, were the ones who presided over the congregation of God in their time. Those holy spouses fulfilled all the precepts that the Law of God, through those priests, prescribed to the faithful of the old covenant. So must we act, in this New Covenant, when we see scandals among the persons consecrated to the Most High in the New and more perfect Covenant.

“The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do; BUT ACCORDING TO THEIR WORKS DO YE NOT.” Mt 23:2-3

Your magazine ECR is constantly saturated with the real, alleged, and invented failings that have arisen in the Catholic Church throughout history. Everything is criticized, above all if it proceeds from the conduct of the Pope or of any other churchman. The very technique of the destructive sects. They never see anything positive in them.

In the Church of Christ, it has already been said, the wheat and the cockle will grow together. There always have been, and will be until the end of time, terrible failings in the human element of those of us who make her up, whether clergy or laity.

The priests most unworthy of their ministry never — and I can vouch for this personally — urge us, in their exhortations during divine worship, to be sinners, even though some of them may perhaps outdo us in this by their bad conduct. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that, thanks be to God, there are in His Church, as I can attest, many priests whose conduct is one of holiness.

In the face of the immoral attitude of our brothers in the faith, be they priests or prominent leaders of the Church, whenever it arises in them, we have the rule expressed by Jesus, quoted above. What ECR points out in this regard with a finger of fire must be viewed from this perspective.

The Pope himself, in celebrating the Holy Eucharist daily, like all priests declares himself before the assembly a great sinner, when he says: “I confess to God and to you, brethren, that I HAVE SINNED GREATLY, in thought, word, deed, and omission…” Here is the reason for the constant prayers of the Universal Church, that each day she, in all her members, may be perfected in charity. We must be in a constant struggle to achieve it, following Christ, renouncing ourselves, being violent so as to win the Kingdom, Mt 11:12 — not fleeing like the apostates.

Jesus Himself, seeing the situation of the Church of His time, had compassion on her faithful and said they seemed like sheep without a shepherd, Mt 9:36, since her leaders were not fulfilling the office entrusted to them by God; and yet the good Jesus never encouraged anyone to leave that religious system. He Himself visited the Temple and its synagogues to expound sound doctrine. He, the one and eternal Priest, had every opportunity to draw the faithful away from that corrupt clergy (though not all of it was corrupt — remember the just Simeon, Lk 2:25) and to have ordered some publication similar to ECR, and He did not do so. A beautiful lesson: the reform and purification of a system is achieved by fighting from within, not by fleeing in cowardice. Several saints of the Church are an example of this:

St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bridget of Sweden, etc., faced with the scandals of the Church of their time, acted in that way: they remained in the Church, and by their holy example they called to account the very leaders of the Church, exalted and unworthy as these were.

In everyday life, if there are deficiencies in my house, I am not going to solve them by fleeing from it, but by staying inside to correct them.

Why then should we be scandalized when ECR takes such pains to highlight the shadows of the members of the Church, and hides her lights, her great holy figures, and their works?

It would be better for ECR to launch a plan for preaching the Gospel of Christ in the Dutch environment, which at present so greatly needs it.

This servant of yours spent a week in Holland in October 2000, and I verified the religious coldness that shows itself among Christians of all denominations. In their churches the elderly predominate; there is a notable absence of young people, and above all of children.

ECR ought to add to its articles subjects that encourage those who call themselves Christians to cooperate, at least in Holland, in the work of the Creator, not preventing the birth of children, condemning artificial birth control practiced in favor of a hedonism empty of Christ. It would also be very fitting to extend this campaign to Spain (where ECR has a branch), so that they may correct this anomaly which is turning that country into a nation of the elderly. (I visited Spain as well.) The Catholic Church carries this out in these and in all the countries of the world. If some Catholics do not heed her message, the fault is theirs; the Catholic leadership can no longer be accused of omission. See Ezekiel 33:9

The Pope constantly condemns the destruction of life (abortion, artificial birth control, euthanasia, etc.). How is it possible that, he being so perverse according to ECR, you should keep silent in this matter about these sins before your readers, chiefly Dutch and Spanish? I hope that the married ex-priests likewise neither use nor approve by their guilty silence these methods that go against life, that great gift of God. Might you not be incurring a reprehensible silence, like the bad Christians who passively witnessed the Jewish Holocaust?

When shall we see in ECR messages motivating your Dutch and Spanish readers in this direction?

When will you devote even half the effort with which you fight the Catholic Church to speaking about this in your magazine?

“Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” Col 2:17

The Church of God is prefigured in the woman of the Apocalypse (chap. 12); she was with child (she awaited the Messiah). That Church, in her Old Testament phase, was many times unfaithful to God; countless are the biblical passages that show it. Her outstanding figures failed, despite being considered just men who loved God. Examples abound; for brevity’s sake I will cite only one:

David, to satisfy his whims, murders 200 Philistines and cuts off their foreskins, presenting them to Saul (1 Sam 18:25-27) — this is sadism. Later, he plans the murder of Urias in order to marry Bethsabee, which he carries out with premeditation, treachery, and advantage. He also sinned when he took the census, 2 Sam 24:1-3.

In his prayers, which remained recorded in Psalm 137:9, he said to God, concerning his enemies: “Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.”

Was he rejected by God, as Saul was? NO, because God had made a covenant with David and had to be faithful to it, 2 Sam 12:10-12.

The marriage of David and Bethsabee is founded upon a crime; nevertheless, God permitted His own Son Jesus to be born of that lineage, Lk 1:27. So too, if in the Church of Christ there are — and we are among them — great sinners, Jesus will not for that reason put an end to Her; at the end of time He will give each one his due.

What can be said of the kings descended from David? With the exception of two or three, all were worse than Attila; but they were members of the People of God, seated on the throne granted by God, and He did not break His covenant.

And if all that happened in the O.T., which was a shadow of what was to come, Col 2:17, why is ECR scandalized at what happens in the N.T.?

The 12 apostles chosen by Jesus failed: Peter doubted Jesus when trying to walk upon the waters, and later denied Him 3 times. Thomas, though he saw Lazarus raised, did not accept that Jesus had risen. He fell into this bad conduct by wandering outside the primitive nucleus of the Church of that time, perhaps by going in search of the truth outside her, Jn 20:24, like the authors of ECR. Almost all abandoned Him on Calvary, and before that they fell asleep in the garden of Gethsemane.

Even with Jesus risen, they felt a great fear and shut themselves in for fear of the Jews, Jn 20:19. Judas betrayed Him.

The disciples of Emmaus, when the Church had barely begun, were already discouraged, Lk 24:17. Why should we be scandalized that, 2000 years after that era, there should be not only the discouraged, but even apostates?

Of Jesus, the meek and humble of heart, they asked that He burn people up with fire, for the offense of not listening to them, Lk 9:54 (the germ of the future evil inquisitors). Of the 7 churches of the Apocalypse, which prefigure the Universal Church of all times (7 denotes fullness), 5 produce rotten fruit; God abominates them out of His mouth, Apoc 3:16. The proportion is very high — some 70%. In the Church today it may happen that of 7 priests, 5 are unworthy. What, then, of a thousand million Catholics? Or of the more than 260 Pontiffs (Popes) there have been? And if the 5 out of 7 did not destroy the Church according to the Apocalypse, may we not think the same now?

Of course we may! The Church is the bride of Christ, and at the end of time, beautiful as a bride, purified now of all evil, she will be wedded eternally to her spouse Jesus. Apoc 21:2.

Was the primitive Church destroyed by these most grave infidelities? Certainly not. Jesus did not promise the members of His Church, however great their standing, IMPECCABILITY. He assured us that the power of the devil would enter the Church, but that it would not PREVAIL against her, Mt 16:18. The closer we come to the end of time, the more Satan will intensify his attacks against the Church and will enter into her, Mt 24:15; the apostasy will appear, 2 Thess 2:2. Nevertheless, there will always be a faithful remnant, though some withdraw from her and attack her.

With the eyes of faith and the testimony of history, we can see that THE CATHOLIC CHURCH has always been the most hated and attacked, from within (apostasies, heresies, etc.) and from without.

She has been fought, and is fought still, by:

In spite of everything, God does not abandon her. This Pilgrim Church, which walks through the desert of this life, prefigured in the Woman who goes into the desert mentioned in Apoc chap. 12, God protects against her enemies. No one will be able to destroy her.

A convert to Catholicism once said to me: I think that if my father went away to a distant country and left me in our house in the care of my brothers, and these grew corrupt in their conduct during his absence, my duty would not be to abandon the house, but to fight to keep it in peace. For my father will return to this house, whatever the conduct of those of us who remain in it. So Christ has His visible Church; and though many of her members grow corrupt, I shall try not to do so, and I shall await my Jesus in His HOUSE, my CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Great saints such as Francis of Assisi, Thomas More, St. Catherine of Siena, etc., were witnesses of the great sins of the clergy of their time, including the Popes, and without leaving the Church, without being scandalized or losing the faith, they fought to purify their Church (from within, not from outside). Indeed, St. Catherine of Siena, seeing this, wrote to Pope Gregory XI:

“Vices, sins, pride, and filth abound today in the Christian people, and singularly in the prelates and in the directors of Holy Church, who are eaters and devourers of souls — I do not say converters, but devourers” (Letter no. 3 )

On another occasion she wrote: “Woe is me, that what Christ won upon the wood of the cross is squandered with harlots…” (Letter XLI, to the Abbot, Apostolic Nuncio).

“Friars and canons ought to be honored men and mirrors of holiness; instead, they now stand as swindlers, casting forth pestilence and filth, an example of moral misery. With pain and sorrow and great bitterness and weeping I write this; and therefore, if I speak too much, may sorrow and love excuse me before God”.

In such a situation St. Catherine could have lost the faith and apostatized (or published a magazine like ECR); but no — she was faithful, and now she is a diamond of holiness that shines in the Pilgrim Church and in the Triumphant Church of heaven.

In modern times we have an Edith Stein, a Carmelite religious of Jewish descent who died in the extermination camps of Nazism, amid the indifference of many Christians (Protestants and Catholics) who knew of the Jewish Holocaust and did nothing to stop it. She could have apostatized in the face of that moral misery; but no — she understood that the CHURCH OF CHRIST, despite the grave sins of those of us who make her up, has the Savior’s promise that she will endure until the end of time.

“And Herod and Pilate were made friends, that same day; for before they were enemies one to another.” Lk 23:12

In Calle Recta the terrible doctrinal differences among the various Protestant denominations, and the sects that spring incessantly from that current, are never clearly denounced. When shall we see ECR analyze subjects such as “Who is in the truth”:

I believe that the position which ECR considers UNIFYING and a sign of TRUTH is that, although these and many more abysmal doctrinal differences exist, so long as these groups are AGAINST THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, all is well. The ecumenism it seeks is like the accidental friendship of Herod and Pilate when they united to destroy Jesus.

Luther, a figure so admired in the pages of ECR, seems to me more sincere before that reality than the editors of ECR; for the latter fail to detect what the ex-priest Luther saw in his own time (as though it were not happening now, 500 years later): the chaos that he himself provoked with that doctrine of SCRIPTURE ALONE AS THE RULE OF FAITH. Here are the fruits the Reformer points out:

“There are almost as many sects and beliefs as there are heads; this one will not admit baptism, that one rejects the sacrament of the altar, a third says that there is an intermediate world between the present one and the day of judgment; nor is there lacking one who teaches that Jesus Christ is not God. There is no one, however much a buffoon he may be, who does not claim to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and does not take his dreams and ravings for prophecies. (Cited in Leslie Rumble, Bible Quizzes to a Street Preacher (Rockford, IL. TAN Books 1976), p. 22.”)

It seems to me an inconsistency that the editors of ECR should have entitled their official magazine “EN LA CALLE RECTA” in order to spread their principal doctrine, or weapon of dialogue, “Scripture alone”; for it is precisely in that street of the Damascus of biblical times, so named, that we find the testimony that Jesus, in the search for the divine light, refers us to His Church — not to a book without a backing, such as the Bible is for Protestants.

Jesus, in parallel revelations, unites Ananias and the model of the converts of all times, St. Paul, in one purpose, which turns the latter into one of the great Apostles. Christ did not ask St. Paul or Ananias to have recourse to Sacred Scripture, or to any sacred writing, for the great Work that the Apostle of the Gentiles would soon begin; rather, He put him in contact with a member of His Church. For the spiritual growth of St. Paul He made use of another man: Ananias. He availed Himself of an intermediary — the very thing ECR so criticizes in Catholics, because we have recourse to our priests.

Jesus, by reason of His Incarnation, sought “men to save men,” Mt 4:19, and imparted to them His grace and His powers for so beautiful a mission (the celebration of the Eucharist, Lk 22:19; the forgiveness of sins, Jn 20:22-23; the transmission of these powers to others, 1 Cor 11:23, 2 Tim 2:2, etc., etc.). This will remain a reality from Pentecost until the Parousia of the Lord, even though the recipients of these divine gifts, through their human misery, should fail.

It is curious that Protestants have never stopped to consider that in heaven it is the setting of Catholic worship that is displayed, not that of the austere and empty Protestant kind:

The Bible shows us in heaven: a Lamb standing as it were slain, Apoc 5:6 — a spiritual sign that the sacrifice which was offered every day on earth, Acts 2:42, continues in heaven.

In heaven are seen censers, Apoc 5:8; candlesticks, Apoc 1:12; ancients who exercise a priestly function, Apoc 4:4; an altar, Apoc 6:9; priestly vestments, Apoc 1:12. A Christian of the kind that those of ECR seek to form would feel uncomfortable in such a state.

Considering the foregoing, I think it would have been more logical, given your line of SCRIPTURE ALONE, to have entitled your official magazine something like “EN LA SOLA ESCRITURA” (“In Scripture Alone”) rather than “EN LA CALLE RECTA.”

In Mexico, where I reside, as in the rest of Latin America, we are suffering a terrible invasion of sects with doctrinal positions closely matching those proclaimed by ECR.

They are causing great division in families. I could cite for you countless disasters of this kind — even deaths, from refusing to accept medicines, because they say they will be healed by faith alone — quite apart from sects as terrible as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, with their well-known and aberrant doctrine of no blood transfusions.

In one rural community several faithful of a supposedly Christian sect died from gas fumes. The pastor, seeing them fall, told them it was “the action of the Holy Spirit.” What would Luther think of this today?

These sects handle concepts such as: “Since you are now born again, a new creature you are; the old things have passed away.” They manipulate the Bible at will in passages such as 2 Cor 5:17 and conclude: since my spouse does not accept my new faith, I abandon him (as an old thing) and marry again.

We have “born-again” pastors — to say nothing of the faithful — married, divorced, remarried, and so on successively.

Even film actresses do it, and then, “thoroughly converted,” they give recitals where they say “all that I have received freely, and freely I give it,” “I am saved now, born again,” “I have a living Christ, not a dead one like that of the Catholics,” etc., etc. But when it is time to leave, nothing is free: they collect their handsome fees and the cost of their travel by plane.

You will be aware that in the Protestant field it is very easy to marry and divorce; those congregations generally keep no register of marriages, much less is it their custom to announce future marriages before the faithful, in case anyone should know of some impediment to their taking place.

The Catholic Church holds the sacrament of matrimony in great sanctity; it is not so in the Protestant or sectarian world. If in China a Catholic should try to marry again, his evil intent will be detected there. I know this for a fact, because I know the structure our Church possesses to prevent it.

I am aware that abuses are perhaps committed on the basis of lies or corruption, but that is not the rule; and God cannot be deceived, even if the priest or the respective ecclesiastical Tribunal is. God will give each one his due on the day of Judgment. Apoc 20:13.

No one will be able to accuse the Catholic Church of not making a great effort in maintaining these registers worldwide. But what do Protestantism and the sects do in this respect?

I should like to know whether, among the ex-priests associated with ECR, you keep any similar register, so that, if they have married, they may not attempt to do so again and incur adultery or fornication, condemned by God — or claim that they are already saved and that the faith of Christ covers them from every sin.

I suggest to you a subject in this regard for coming issues of ECR. In 2 Cor 11:4 we are warned that there are those who preach “another Christ.” It is very common for new religious groups to take the person of Christ as their banner; some are Christs made in USA, like that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or others of mutilated doctrine, “Christs of convenience” — they are not the Christ of the Bible.

There are some who call themselves genuine disciples of Christ and proclaim themselves “born again,” saved now forever. Others put a “marketing” label on salvation, as in a commercial offer: They say you will obtain salvation in one minute, in the time it takes you to say “I accept Christ in my heart as my only and sufficient Savior” — by faith alone, no works at all. As was said before: SIN BOLDLY, BUT BELIEVE MORE BOLDLY.

The Christ of the Bible is accepted in 100% of His teachings, not only in those that sound comfortable to us for a life of Christian pretense.

If He said “This is my body,” Mt 26:26, and promised eternal life to whoever should eat it, John chap. 6 — and there is someone who rejects it or receives it only as a mere symbol, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

If He said to Peter, “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep,” Jn 21:15-17, and someone resists accepting this Shepherd appointed by Christ, and those who succeeded him, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

If He said, “whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them…,” Jn 20:22-23, and someone does not accept that this great power was shared with men by Jesus, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

If He permitted that in the Bible His Mother the Virgin Mary should be called “the mother of my Lord” — synonymous with Mother of God — Lk 1:43, the very Lord in whom St. Elizabeth believes; and now there is someone scandalized by that title given to the mother of Jesus, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

If Jesus celebrated the Eucharist on the very Sunday He rose, with the disciples of Emmaus — He did not wait months or a year, Lk 24:30 — and the first Christians, following His example, carried it out with perseverance, Acts 2:42; and now there are those who relegate this to a symbolic and unimportant celebration, conditioned on the leader or pastor of the moment, every few months or once a year, such persons no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

Lacking the Eucharist in the Catholic sense, Protestantism reflects in its very churches this absence and aridity of God. Protestant churches generally remain closed all day and open only when the pastor arrives; Catholic churches, by contrast, are open all day, and the faithful come to pray before Jesus in the Tabernacle even when no service whatever is being celebrated at that moment.

Likewise, during Catholic worship the faithful adopt an attitude of great respect and silence. In Protestant worship one sees more disorder (they chat among themselves, pass the musical instruments around at every moment, cross their legs as if at a social gathering; some — I have seen them — drink a soft drink in the middle of the service in hot weather, and several other details not present in similar situations among Catholics).

An Adventist, chatting with the undersigned, after expressing himself in the most atrocious terms against the Catholic faith, was asked by me: “Tell me sincerely, have you seen even one positive thing in Catholicism? Not everything can be bad. Absolute evil, humanly speaking, does not exist; even Hitler had positive traits — he was a magnificent leader of masses, though for noxious ends, and it was he who promoted the construction of the first European motorways. Does the Catholic Church, for you, have nothing good?” The Adventist said to me: my pastor and the whole congregation admire the respect with which you celebrate your worship, and I would like to know how we could achieve it. I told him: it would be impossible; everything revolves around our accepting that Christ is present in the Eucharistic Species, which for you and all non-Catholics is only a symbol. It will never be the same to be in an Assembly with a symbol of God as to be with HIM HIMSELF REALLY PRESENT. From this proceeds everything you tell me you admire in Catholicism. The Adventist fell silent and departed.

If Christ commanded baptism in the name of the three Divine Persons, Mt 28:19-20, and now there is someone who says it must not be so, but only in the exclusive name of Jesus, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

If Christ never wrote any book, nor commanded His disciples to do so in order to form the New Testament, but rather that “the voice of His Church be heard,” Mt 18:17; and now there is someone who says that SCRIPTURE ALONE IS THE RULE OF FAITH, that person no longer believed 100% in the Christ of the Bible.

And so one could continue indefinitely, in view of the present panorama of so many Christs preached to us by countless religious groups and sects.

The “slogan” “accept Christ as your only and sufficient Savior” — the battle cry for winning proselytes of many sects, a phrase which, by the way, is not found in the Bible and which not even Luther knew — tries to induce whoever proclaims it to believe that in this way he will accept “a living Christ”; but analyzing its origin, sprung from the sectarian world, what it leads us to instead is a “mutilated Christ of human manufacture,” since those groups, in their totality, reject the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and other basic doctrines contained in the TOTAL message of Christ.

A Catholic preacher used to say that “the Christ of the Eucharist” makes Himself more present to us than Christ Himself when He was physically in the lands of Palestine. For example, in the first century Christ preached His gospel and worked His miracles within the narrow confines of Galilee; in that era, in what is now America, for example, He was not present in that way. The indigenous races (Aztecs, Incas, etc.) did not have the opportunity to see Him visibly; and yet, with the arrival of the missionaries of our Mother Country Spain, who opened these lands with their preaching, sealed even with martyrdom, they received a dynamic and living Christ, present in every Tabernacle.

This is the Christ our Catholic faith proclaims. Certainly He is present spiritually, as He promised, Mt 18:20, wherever two or three are gathered in His name; but really — with His body, His blood, and His Divinity — only in the Eucharistic Species and in heaven. This second presence the Protestant denominations, and the sects originating from them, lack.

That is why the phrase “accept Christ as your only and sufficient Savior,” viewed in the light of the Bible and of the Church’s 2000 years of history, must be regarded with reserve, because it could be a “Christ devalued and accommodated to the human interests of the one who claims thus to accept Him” — “another Christ,” 2 Cor 11:4, not the biblical one. Such a profession is relative, and the lips that sing praises to that Christ must be listened to with prudence, lest they refer, perhaps without knowing it, to the “Christ of their own human making,” not to the CHRIST OF THE BIBLE.

Great saints — to cite one: St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, or St. John of the Cross — without boasting as today’s Protestant “slogans” do, left imprinted in their books expressions of their great love for and surrender to Christ that leave pale the most repetitive and hackneyed phrases of many who now call themselves “born-again Christians” or who follow, as they claim, “a living Christ.”

You, as priests, must have known — and if you did not, it would be most edifying for you to read and ponder — the sublime writings of a St. John of the Cross, such as “The Spiritual Canticle between the Soul and Christ and the Living Flame of Love,” “The Dark Night of the Soul,” “The Ascent of Mount Carmel,” etc., and you will see that persons like him, without using the refrain of “having Christ as one’s only and sufficient Savior,” set down these sublime experiences of spirituality, never surpassed, concerning their love for and surrender to the Christ of the Bible — not the one the sects ask us to accept.

I suggest that you examine the life of St. John of the Cross, and you will see how he suffered the envy of his own brothers of the religious Order to which he belonged; he came to be condemned like a criminal and was even locked up in the prison of Toledo, and from his lips not one word of complaint escaped. He too could — and talent he did not lack — have published a magazine in the style of ECR and apostatized from Catholicism; but he did not do so. One more example among the many in history of those who love the Church of Christ and are faithful to her Founder and to Her, unto death.

There are also those who, terribly, pose a dilemma for salvation: ALL WITH CHRIST, NO ONE WITH THE CHURCH. CHRIST SAVES, THE CHURCH DOES NOT.

If Christ had not founded a Church, and His plan of salvation did not include her as His living presence from Pentecost until the Parousia, those who proclaim this might be right.

We Catholics are accused of identifying the plan of salvation with “the holy Church” — written with scornful quotation marks — and not with Christ. This is a lie. We know that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that outside of Him there is no salvation; but we also accept that this salvation is provided to us, according to His own plan, within His Church, not outside of Her. Otherwise there would be neither point nor sense in His having said “I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH,” Mt 16:18.

Christ is the head of the Church and the Church His body, Eph 5:23, Col 1:18. Christ is the bridegroom and the Church His bride, Mt 25:1, Apoc 21:2. It is inconceivable that some, believing themselves Christians, should attempt to separate, in the plan of salvation, Christ from the Church — the head from the body, the bridegroom from the bride. A perverse and blasphemous pretension.

Owing to the evils generated by the Protestant reformation, with the countless sects that have sprung from it, all of them claiming to be the true Church of Christ, from this has been born that wicked doctrine of separating the Church from the plan of salvation of the person of Christ.

There are some who, considering themselves Christians, attend Baptist worship in the morning and Pentecostal worship in the afternoon, and another day go to the Presbyterian, to finish up afterwards in some community that calls itself simply “Christian” — all of them preaching a different Christ, united only by their rejection of Catholicism. They are, as we say in Mexico, “sesame for every mole sauce.” These people feel like fish in water, since they consider that the Church is something invisible and relative, and that only Christ saves. This situation is generated precisely by the doctrine that it suffices to accept Christ, with no need of a VISIBLE CHURCH.

It is notable that the reader of ECR is led to conclude that Catholicism is the false religion that has betrayed Christ, and that only outside of it, under the banner of the lived experience of a Christ accepted by faith alone, can salvation be attained.

If the foregoing thesis — so characteristic of all Protestants and of the sects born of Protestantism — were true, one would erroneously conclude that the more than 1000 million Catholics who inhabit the earth, plus the immense majority who lived from the first century to the present, and those who will do so from now until the Parousia of the Lord, are condemned and are therefore candidates for hell.

Such a reality — so many there would be in hell for not following the doctrine inspired by the sixteenth-century reformers, added to the Muslims and the other non-Christian religions that have not received “Christ as their only and sufficient Savior” — would show us a very cruel God, who will grant His salvation only to a restricted group holding the Protestant doctrine.

For a Christian, of those who call themselves “born again,” to think this and accept it makes him, morally, a being more terrible than the inquisitor Torquemada, or the others who, according to history, used the torment of fire on those who, from their point of view, betrayed the faith of Christ as they erroneously understood it.

The doctrine that ECR sets down in its pages shows an evil God, who for almost 16 centuries — until the reformers came, with doctrines never before proclaimed — permitted millions of souls to remain trapped, without hope of salvation, in the Catholic Church. If that were so, we may ask ourselves:

In what Church did men of great holiness and wisdom arise, such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. John Chrysostom, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, etc., etc.? Of this last, Luther himself, so admired by ECR, went so far as to exclaim: “If there ever was in the world a monk holy and God-fearing, it was St. Bernard of Clairvaux” (The History of the Christian Church, a Protestant publication, by Jesse Lyman (1985) — Editorial Vida, Miami, Florida, USA, p. 128).

Protestants, who have made their own the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ and of the Most Holy Trinity, ought to be grateful to Catholic figures such as a St. Athanasius, who confronted the heretic Arius with sound doctrine, as St. Jerome did Pelagius, and St. Augustine others who spread erroneous Christological doctrines. Likewise to the great Councils of the Church, such as that of Chalcedon and others, which reaffirmed the sacred deposit of the Gospel of Christ.

When the great heretics of the past attempted to corrupt sound doctrine, who came out to confront them and to combat their errors? Was it the Baptists, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the born-again, those who had framed that phrase about accepting Christ as one’s only and sufficient Savior? Certainly not. It was members of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Why, then, do the groups and congregations issued from the Lutheran rebellion, which share the CHRISTOLOGY defended by Catholic figures, not acknowledge to them this sublime deed? On the contrary, at all costs they avoid showing their followers this part of the history of the Church, and shut themselves up solely in that of her first 40 years of existence, shown in the book of Acts. The only one deceitfully published by ECR.

A vain effort — the “light cannot be hidden under a bushel,” Mt 5:15

No, sirs: the Church of Christ was not only the one narrated in the book of Acts, but the one that has endured from Pentecost to our own days, and that will be present on the day of the Parousia of the Lord, though many should try to destroy her or to separate her from her Divine spouse, CHRIST OUR SAVIOR.

The editors of ECR may say: we do not think so; but your positions, subtly or openly, declare it by the way you present your plan of salvation — the more so since, according to ECR , we are idolaters because we have idols (images that we venerate). To the foregoing you could add that, if we are mistaken about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species, we are the most terrible of idolaters, believing that in a simple piece of Bread are the body and the blood of the Savior of the World. But if the mistaken ones are the others — what great manna they are missing! Jn 6:49-50.

Now that satanic sects exist, in them the Devil himself, better than many who call themselves Christians, bears witness to the REAL PRESENCE OF JESUS IN THE EUCHARIST. The leaders of these terrible sects eagerly seek only consecrated hosts from the Catholic Church in order to profane them. Why do they act thus, and not try to obtain the bread of the so-called Lord’s Supper celebrated by non-Catholics or Protestants? Simply because the Devil himself makes known to them that only in the hosts of the Catholic Mass is CHRIST present, whom the Evil One so hates. In the others there is simply NOTHING — only flour.

You who are ex-priests, from your ministry, will be able to understand more deeply what this unworthy layman tells you. When each day you see your hands, consecrated with the holy oil, remember this, and pray to the Lord for yourselves and for this servant.

Here in Mexico, a great many years ago, a film was shown, and in one of its scenes an ex-priest, consumed by the vice of drunkenness, appeared inside a tavern saying to a young Catholic: do you believe in the humbug that we can change wine into the blood of Christ? I, who was a priest, tell you: this is a great lie; and to prove it to you — and asking the barman for a large vessel with plenty of wine, he said to the young man: right here on the bar of this tavern, as if it were the altar, I am going to “consecrate” for you this thing you say you believe in. And having said this, he pronounced the ritual words of the consecration, the same that every priest repeats at every Mass, as Jesus did at the Last Supper. This done, the ex-priest, amid mockery, made to throw the consecrated wine on the floor. The young man at once snatched the great cup from him and drank all its contents. As a consequence of this, the young man died. Seeing this, the ex-priest fell on his knees, and there and then begged God’s forgiveness for so great a sin, and changed his life of sin for one of surrender to Jesus, who had once called him to share in His priesthood.

Even though what has just been narrated is a film, it leaves us a great message of faith.

“No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Lk 9:62

Accepting that you are ex-priests in the exercise of your ministry, though not in your identity — since, whatever decision you may have taken, I continue to regard you as priests FOREVER — I share with you, by way of conclusion, the following:

I think that some withdrew from their ministry for human reasons and miseries, both their own and those occasioned by people who did not give before you a witness of Christian love, or perhaps support for your vocation — possibly even your own bishop. The Church reminds us that, to a greater or lesser degree, we have often failed to be the reflection of the most holy face of Christ before our brethren, and that this delays the growth of the Kingdom of God (Decree on Ecumenism, chap. I, no. 4). Others, perhaps, through an immature vocation or human weakness. The undersigned is no one, in this case, to judge you; I remit the judgment to our good God.

As Catholics, still faithful by the grace of God to our Church, we must always pray for our priests, and with greater insistence for those who have withdrawn from their ministry — the more so because, as I know personally, have observed, and am certain, many of them never manage to be happy, even if they marry and have children.

I know of an ex-priest whose wife, several years after his withdrawal, when they were already living together, related that she noticed he would rise in the small hours of the night; and one day, following him secretly, she saw with sadness how he spread his priestly vestments upon a bed and, kneeling, prayed before them, his eyes covered with tears. Comment is superfluous.

I do not know, but I think that if such cases have not yet arisen, there will arise cases of sons of ex-priests whom, moved by the grace of God, we shall one day see become priests in their turn. A son of the prominent Nazi criminal Bormann, who hated the Church, came to the priesthood; likewise the daughter of a ferocious and bloodthirsty French revolutionary by the surname of Duchesne, an arch-enemy of the Church, became a missionary religious in the territory of Canada, and she is now in the process of canonization. Both, apart from their vocation, did so moved to implore God’s forgiveness for the faults of their fathers. Could not something similar happen one day with the son or daughter of an ex-priest?

The judgments and the plan of God are incomprehensible to us. Remember: the Pharaoh of Egypt tried to put an end to the people of Israel, and their principal liberator, who frustrated those plans, was sheltered by the very members of Pharaoh’s household, Ex 2:8. In the N.T., Saul, an expert in the knowledge of Scripture, Acts 22:3, failing to identify in it its central figure, Jesus the Messiah there proclaimed, persecuted Him ferociously; and it was his potential victims, who so feared him, Acts 9:26, who helped him in his sublime ministry as Apostle. These, we might say, are “the paradoxes of God.”

So it may happen that from the descendants of the ex-priests great apostles of the Catholic faith will arise. It is not impossible to hope for this from a God who tells us that, if men were to silence the truth, “the stones will cry out,” Lk 19:40.

Be assured that the undersigned, a base sinner, always keeps the ex-priests present in his simple prayers.

A young fundamentalist Protestant from the USA, named Tim Staples, began to have doubts about the truth of his religion and started to investigate the Catholic Church on his own; but as he did not wish to change just like that, he decided to enroll in the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College. There they saw that he was “bitten” by Catholicism, because of the questions he asked, and they told him they would introduce him to a person who would cure him definitively of that “disease.” They introduced him to an “expert” on Catholicism, who turned out to be a former Catholic priest named Andrew Caradagas; the latter told him that the Popes existed only from after the fifth century, but he refuted him by citing testimonies of Fathers of the Church earlier than that century (the ones ECR never cites) that spoke of the authority of the Bishop of Rome. He also told him that the Eucharist was an invention of the Middle Ages. The young man cited to him testimonies of Fathers as ancient as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin, and St. Irenaeus (second century) on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (likewise never presented to the readers of ECR). The sad thing is that the ex-priest knew all this very well (as the ex-priests who edit ECR evidently know it well). The young convert to Catholicism recounts that, as they went on debating more and more doctrines, it became evident to him that the ex-priest had not left the Church for doctrinal reasons; the man finally admitted that he had had in the Catholic Church certain “bad experiences” which led him to abandon her. (Reference from the book Surprised by Truth, Basilica Press, San Diego, CA 1994, by Patrick Madrid, p. 238.)

To ex-priests of this type, who knew and know the full knowledge of the truth, Sacred Scripture refers with terrible words:

“For if we sin wilfully after having received the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins, but a certain dreadful expectation of judgment, and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries.” Heb 10:26-27, Douay-Rheims Bible.

These ex-priests ought to meditate on the vanity of their effort, Psalm 127:1; and it would suffice for them to reflect that Christ and His Church are indestructible, for He assists her always and draws good out of evil.

Against the heretic — and even bishop — Arius, there arose a St. Athanasius. Against the corruption of the medieval Church (simony, clerical corruption, lust, etc.), a St. Francis of Assisi. Against Luther, a St. Ignatius of Loyola. Against the work of the atheistic communism of our times, “a man come from the Marxist world: John Paul II,” who greatly influenced the fall of that system, symbolized in the Berlin Wall (“Como El Papa Venció al Comunismo” [How the Pope Defeated Communism], Ediciones Rialp, Sebastián Elcano 30, 28012 MADRID, 1992) — a freedom now taken advantage of by the sects, which, like the locusts of Egypt, go to those countries hungry for God to capture adherents. The testimonies are innumerable; it is enough to examine the 20 centuries of the history of the Church.

Those of us who by the grace of God are still faithful to Christ and to His Church, in spite of all our miseries, must be aware that from works such as those of the authors of ECR, negative as they are toward the plan of salvation, our good God will draw good, as He reminds us in point 314 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“It is our firm belief that God is the Lord of the world and of its history. Yet the ways of His providence often remain unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge comes to a close and we behold God ‘face to face’ 1 Cor 13:12, shall we fully know the paths along which, even THROUGH THE DRAMAS OF EVIL AND SIN, God will have led His creation to the rest of that definitive Sabbath Gen 2:2, with a view to which He created heaven and earth”

That is also why we must be aware that there are many ex-priests who left for motives like the one just referred to, and who are now in anti-Catholic congregations trying to silence their conscience; and for that reason they shout loudly and strive to discredit Catholicism, believing that they thereby justify themselves. They do not seek to evangelize in Christ, but to use their experience and disillusionment to mask their real frustrations.

Others, more sadly, there are who plainly and consciously betrayed Christ, their ministry, and His Church. They took two terrible steps: first, they turned their backs on their priestly ministry, a participation in the ONE MINISTRY OF CHRIST; and afterwards, with fury, they fight the Church where their hands were anointed with the holy oil. For them it only remains for us to invoke the mercy of God, that they may not be eternally confounded on the day of the Last Judgment.

It has been said that Christ is either betrayed or recognized in the Eucharist. Judas betrayed Him on the day of the Institution of this Divine Sacrament, Mt 26:25, and the disciples of Emmaus knew Him “in the breaking of the bread,” Lk 24:35. It is significant that the disciples of Emmaus — even though it was Jesus Himself who explained the Scriptures to them on the road to that village, the model teacher, and undoubtedly with one of His most illuminating and beautiful sermons — discovered Jesus not through biblical preaching, but “in the breaking of the bread”: the Eucharist, what we commonly call the Holy Mass.

That is why the Jesus of the Bible is discovered in His complete Gospel, 100%, which includes the great Mystery of our Faith, the Holy Eucharist — not with extra-biblical expressions such as “I accept Christ as my only and sufficient Savior,” which are of human origin.

This every Catholic priest will always remember, within or outside the ministry. His life, whatever course it may follow, will always be bound to the sacrament of our Faith, the Holy Eucharist; his hands were consecrated for it by the Bishop, successor of the very apostles of the Divine Lamb, Jesus.

I take my leave, wishing that CHRIST, THE ONLY AND ETERNAL PRIEST, may show you His FACE and give you peace. Commending myself to your prayers, and keeping you present in mine.