God can’t forgive 2 things: A priest or pastor attached to money and who mistreats people

  If there’s anyone who targets the wrong practices in the Catholic church, it’s Pope Francis himself who’s in the forefront of reformation.

  According to Vatican Radio, he made it amply clear last week that people will forgive a weak priest or pastoral minister, but they will not forgive a greedy one or one who mistreats people. He doesn't end there. He also advises laity to point out corruption and business in the church without any fear or consternation.   

 The people of God can forgive their priests, when they are weak; when they slip on a sin ... the people know how to forgive them. But there are two things that the people of God cannot forgive: a priest attached to money and a priest who mistreats people. This they cannot forgive!    

Jesus "is not angry". It is the Wrath of God, zeal for the House of God because you cannot serve two masters, either you worship the living God, or your worship money,  Pope said at a Mass as he marked the feast of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary last week. That said, majority of priests are good and serve the Lord with all their heart and might. But there’re some black sheep among them also. I think what Pope said is also true for protestant pastors as well. A pastor should not use church to make money and conduct business.

 Why does Jesus have an issue with money? Because redemption is free; it is God’s free gift, He comes to brings us the all-encompassing gratuity of God’s love. So when the Church or churches start doing business, then it is said that -- salvation is not so free. This is why Jesus takes the whip to hand to carry out this act of the purification of the Temple, Vatican Radio said quoting Pope.

  Soon after Pope Francis was ordained priest many years ago, he was with a group of college students and one couple wanted to get married. They went to a parish, but they wanted a wedding ceremony with the Mass. And, the parish secretary there said: “No, no, you cannot. Why can’t we have a Mass? If the Council always recommends people to have a ceremony with the Mass.”

  “No, you cannot, because it can’t last more than 20 minutes,” the secretary said.

 “But why?” the couple asked.

  “Because there are other slots (in the timetable for ceremonies),” he said.

  “But, we want the Mass,” the couple said.

 “So you will have to pay for two slots,” the parish secretary said.

  So in order to have a wedding ceremony with the Mass had to pay two slots. This is the sin of scandal, Pope Francis said.

  It is scandalous when the Temple, the House of God, becomes a place of business, as in the case of that wedding, the church was being rented out.

 "People are good. People went to the Temple and did not look at these things, they sought God and prayed but they had to change their money into coins to make offers. The people of God did not go to the Temple for these people, for those who were selling things, they went because it was the Temple of God," Pope said. But there was corruption that scandalized the people.

 How often when we enter a church do we see, even today, signs of business? Do we see a price list hanging there for baptism, blessings, Mass intentions? People are scandalized.

  We should have the courage to point out corruption and business in the church. "When those who are in the Temple – be they priests, lay people, secretaries, but who manage the Temple, who ministry of the Temple - become businessmen, people are scandalized. And we are responsible for this. The laity too! Everyone,” Pope says.

  A church should not be a place to conduct business. If we see this in our parishes, we should have the courage to say these things to the parish priest, he said. It is scandalous when the Temple, the House of God, becomes a place of business, as in the case of that wedding: the church was being rented out”. 

Don’t make a spectacle of sacraments

  Wedding is a celebration. Certainly, it’s also is a sacrament. So is baptism. But we often forget this fact and turn weddings into a pageant, or a spectacle.   

 Pope Francis recently lambasted the trend in the church community to convert wedding into a spectacle and vanity. This is a different type of celebration which often leads to vulgar display of wealth and influence in the society. In other words, a public display of excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements. Is this Kingdom of God? No.

“Our human weakness prefers a spectacle,” Pope Francis said in his homily at Santa Marta recently. This sometimes happens “in celebrating certain sacraments”, he said, leading us to think about weddings in particular. We have to ask ourselves whether these people “have come to receive a sacrament, to have a feast like at Cana in Galilee, or have they come to have a pageant, to be seen, for vanity?” There is thus a continuous temptation: not to accept that the Kingdom of God is silent, he said.

 People are eager to make wedding and baptism celebrations into a kind of spectacle with music, dance, cultural programmes and scrumptious lunch or dinner. Liquor flows very liberally. A huge money is spent for such celebrations. And everybody forgets Jesus. 

 Remember that the excluded are waiting on the other side. We refuse to acknowledge even their existence. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The great spectacle goes on in the name of baptism and wedding. There’s no wonder that many such weddings finally end up in divorces years later.

 When we get into such pageants, please remember whether we’re on the right side of our Lord. A power show might give you instant satisfaction, importance and power, but the crucial question is: does our Lord want this kind of spectacle along with sacraments? Not at all.   

  Pope recommended a brief examination of conscience to avoid falling into the temptation of the spectacle, by asking a few simple questions. “Are you a Christian? Yes! Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Yes! Do you believe in the sacraments? Yes! Do you believe that Jesus is there and that He has come here now? Yes, yes, yes!” Well then, Pope Francis continued, “why don’t you go to adore Him, why don’t you go to Mass, why don’t you take Communion, why don’t you draw near to the Lord”, so that his Kingdom may “grow” within you? After all, the Pontiff stated, “the Lord never says that the Kingdom of God is a spectacle”.

 His words are clear. Why don’t you come closer to our Lord instead of getting into the trap of pageants.

 “It (sacrament) is a celebration, but it’s different! It’s a beautiful celebration, a grand feast. And Heaven will be feast, but not a spectacle,” he says. Instead, our human weakness prefers a spectacle.

 In other words, the Pope said, “the Kingdom of God is not a spectacle.” So often, the spectacle is a caricature of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, we must never “forget that it was one of the three temptations”: in the desert, Jesus is told: “go to the pinnacle of the temple and throw yourself down, and everyone will believe. Make a spectacle”. “However, the Kingdom of God is silent, it grows within; the Holy Spirit makes it grow with our willingness, in our soil, which we must prepare. But it grows slowly, silently,” he said.

  The Kingdom of God is humble, like a seed: humble. However, it becomes big by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have to let it grow within us, without boasting. 

Ignore Halloween, it's devilish

 Halloween originates from superstitions that exalt malign spirits and demons

 Is Halloween all about fun and frolic? No. As innocent children around the world get excited about dressing up as ghouls and ghosts, the Catholic Church had warned that celebrating Halloween can tempt people into worship of the occult.
 There's a belief among many people that Halloween was a bit of harmless fun involving fake blood and Frankenstein masks, but they would be gravely mistaken, said Father Aldo Buonaiuto, a Catholic priest who took part in an international conference of exorcists in Rome last week. "Halloween originates from superstitions that exalt malign spirits and demons. Many people see it as a simple carnival, but it is anything but innocent, it is a subterranean world based on the occult," he told La Nazione, an Italian newspaper.

"Halloween is the anti-chamber towards something much more disturbing. For devotees of the occult, October 31 is the satanic new year. It's a time for luring new converts. And it's a time when exorcists have to work harder," said the priest, a member of the Pope John XXIII Association, a Catholic organisation which combats black magic sects in 25 countries around the world. "With the arrival of Halloween, there is an increase in black magic rites, sacrilege and the adoration of Satan, as well as demonic possessions," he said.
 Halloween is one of the most dangerous spiritual holidays of the year. The celebration of Halloween is very common in the US. It has now made an entry into other countries. This writer has come across many Christians and their kids celebrating Halloween without knowing what it represents or signifies. It doesn't strike them that Halloween represents an opportunity to embrace the evil, devilish, dark side of the spiritual world.
 In response to the growing popularity of Halloween, the association has launched a campaign to replace it with a rival, Christian festival called 'Holyween'. The idea is to banish pumpkins, plastic skeletons and other Halloween emblems and instead hang up pictures of saints and martyrs.
 Churches should hold Masses, prayer vigils and adorations in honour of Christian saints in order to combat the malign influence of Halloween, the priest said.
 Pope Francis recently said at his homily at a morning Mass at the Vatican: "This generation, and many others, have been led to believe that the devil is a myth, a figure, an idea, the idea of evil." "But the devil exists and we must fight against him," Pope said.
Last week, Pope Francis had given a special blessing to a group of some 300 Catholic exorcists meeting in Rome ahead of All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead (Halloween). The nature of devils and demons, and their relationship to all kinds of psychological disturbances (or vice versa) is a complicated question, but on one point the Church is unequivocal: exorcism is no job for amateurs. For both the possessed and the priest-practitioner, driving out the devil can be dangerous to mind, body and spirit.
 The International Association of Exorcists was recognized in June by the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy and convened here in Rome last week week to discuss "best practices" and hear from psychologists who specialize in recognizing what may often be indistinguishable differences between demonic possession and mental illness.

HALLOWEEN, A PAGAN FESTIVAL

 In an article in www.cbn.com, Elliott Watson writes that the origins of Halloween are Celtic in tradition and have to do with observing the end of summer sacrifices to gods in Druidic tradition. In what is now Britain and France, it was the beginning of the Celtic year, and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. The waning of the sun and the approach of dark winter made the evil spirits rejoice and play nasty tricks. Believe it or not, most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to these old pagan rites and superstitions.
 "Just before reaching a conclusion on the subject, I was struck with the thought that I ought to further my search and find out what Wicca, the official religion of witchcraft, has to say about Halloween. Perhaps they viewed the day as a simple fun and innocent neighborhood activity?" Watson writes.
 “Shock” is the only word to describe what I found. Halloween is a real, sacred day for those who follow Wicca. In fact, it is one of two high and holy days for them. The Celtic belief of spirits being released is current, along with the worship of Samhain (the lord of death) – both are promoted as something to embrace on that day. There is no question in my mind that to those who believe and follow the practices of witchcraft, Halloween represents an opportunity to embrace the evil, devilish, dark side of the spiritual world, Watson writes.

Devil exists... we have to fight against him

  There’s a great misconception about the Devil, the prince of darkness, or as Jesus calls him, “the prince of this world”. There’s a belief among many people that the devil is a myth, an idea or imagination. No. Not at all.

 Pope Francis, in his homily last week, stated, “they wanted us to believe that the Devil was a myth, a figure, an idea, the idea of evil. However, the Devil exists and we have to fight against him. St Paul recalls it, ‘the Word of God says it’, yet it seems that ‘we aren’t quite convinced’ of this reality.” The prince of darkness is the one who tempt people away from God and salvation.

Fr Gabriele Amorth

  In his powerful book 'An exorcist tells his story', Fr Gabriele Amorth, the renowned chief exorcist of Rome, says, “St John (1John 5:19) affirms that “the whole world in the power of the evil one.” By word “the world” John means everything that’s opposed to God, Fr Amorth says.

 Is the Church doing enough to defeat the machinations of the Devil?

 According to Fr Amorth, who was granted the faculty of exorcist by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the Pope's vicar of the Diocese of Rome, while the pastoral ministry (of exorcism) is entirely overlooked in the Catholic world today, it was not so in the past. "In some denominations of the Protestant church, exorcisms are still practiced frequently and fruitfully," he writes.

 Fr Amorth says in the book, "Bishops must realize that this ministry is entirely entrusted to their care; it's only they who can practice or delegate and exorcism. Sadly since most bishops have never performed an exorcism, they are seldom aware of the extent of the need." The scarcity of exorcists clearly denotes a lack of interest on the part of episcopate in general. “The first step, the fundamental step, is to reawaken the awareness of bishops and priests, according to sound doctrine the Scripture, tradition, and the Magesterium have always transmitted," the book says.

 What harm can the devil cause to the loving? "He talks of the ordinary and extraordinary activities. There are six different forms for the second category: External physical pain caused by satan, demonic possession, diabolical oppression, diabolic obsession, diabolic infestation and diabolical subjugation or dependence," Fr Amorth writes.

  Pope Francis said the life of a Christian ‘is a military life’ and it takes ‘strength and courage’ to ‘withstand’ the Devil’s temptations and to ‘proclaim’ the truth. This is a ‘beautiful battle’ because it gives us that joy the Lord has prevailed within us, that great happiness. It takes strength and courage, the Pontiff explained, for it is not a ‘simple confrontation’ but a ‘continuous battle’ with the “Prince of Darkness”. It is this close confrontation, the Pope indicated, which is referred to in the catechism in which “they taught us that in Christian life there are three enemies: the demon, the world and the flesh”. It’s about the everyday struggle with “greed, lust, gluttony, arrogance, pride, envy” -- all vices “which are the wound of original sin.”

Pope says, “We could ask ourselves: Is the salvation that Jesus gives us free? Yes, but you have to protect it. And as Paul writes, to do so we have to “put on the whole armor of God” for “one cannot think of a spiritual life, a Christian life” without withstanding temptations, without battling the Devil”. How is this “armour of God” made? The Apostle provides a few details: Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth. Thus, first of all, Truth is required because “the Devil is a liar, he is the father of liars”. Then, Paul continues, one must put on “the breastplate of righteousness”: indeed we cannot be Christians without continuously working to be just.

 In fact, a Christian is a man or a woman of peace and if there isn’t “peace in the heart” then there’s something wrong: it’s peace that “gives you strength for the battle”.

 In the end, the Letter to the Ephesians reads: “above all taking the shield of faith”. “One thing that would really help us would be to ask ourselves: How is my faith? Do I believe or not? Or do I partly believe and partly not? Am I somewhat worldly and somewhat a believer? When we recite the Creed, do we do so only in “words? Are we aware without faith we can’t go forward, we can’t safeguard the salvation of God?” Pope says.

 The armour of a Christian  also includes the “helmet of salvation”, the “sword of the Spirit” and prayer. St Paul advises: “Pray at all times.”

“Pray, pray… one cannot pursue a Christian life without vigilance,” he says.