ONE FOLD, ONE SHEPHERD

A SERMON FOR THE 3rd SUNDAY AFER EPIPHANY

In 1898, Fr. Paul Wattson of the Episcopalian Church founded, in a farmhouse called Graymoor in upstate New York, a religious congregation of Franciscan friars, known as the Society of the Atonement.   Strangely enough, although they kept their allegiance to the Episcopal Church, these friars preached the primacy of the Roman pontiff, and worked to unite the Episcopalians with the Catholic Church.  Obviously, this didn’t work out too well, and their fellow Episcopalians ostracized them for their impossible position of having a foot in both camps.  Eventually, in 1909, the Friars of Graymoor applied to Rome for admission to the true Church.  Rome took the unprecedented step of receiving them into the Church, not as individuals, but as a corporate body, and allowed them to continue their way of life.

The friars thus continued their emphasis on Church Unity.  In 1908, they had established a week of the year dedicated specifically to the aim of bringing all the world’s religions into the one true Church, the one fold with one shepherd that our Lord himself had prayed for at the Last Supper. This special week begins on January 18^th, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome, and ends on the 25^th, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.  It is known as the Chair of Unity Octave, which this year commenced last Thursday.  Each day of the Octave has a particular intention, and today, the fourth day in the Octave, is for the reunion of the European Protestants to the Church.  After Mass today, we’ll say together the prayers for this intention instead of the usual Leonine Prayers.  You’ll find the text of the prayers in your Sunday bulletin.

Our expectations in having our prayers answered may not, perhaps, be as solid as they should be.  After all, we have seen the exact opposite of what we’re praying for happen all over not just Europe but the world, since Vatican II.  Right up until that Council, conversions to the Catholic Church were at an all-time high, but today, it is the Catholics who are leaving the Church in droves, to become either Protestants themselves, or to give up on religion altogether.  This is no wonder, when the post-Conciliar Church preaches that there is no essential difference between the various religions of the world, that we all worship the same God, and that God doesn’t care what faith or denomination you belong to, so long as you’re a nice person and do good unto others.  Why bother being a Catholic, when the Mass is no different from the service at the local Episcopalian or Lutheran church, where they have a better choir, a better preacher, and fresher donuts at the parish breakfast? 

So we may be tempted to downplay the importance of this Chair of Unity Octave these days as a hopeless cause.  And yet, it was the prayer of Christ himself, that all may be one, even as he and his heavenly Father are one.  We would be lax in our duty if we were not to continue the cause of converting our fellow man to the truth.  Ours is an apostolic Church, and we must be apostles.  Christ himself revealed it as his will, and we must do God’s will.  How our prayers may be answered is not for us to try and figure out.  Abandonment to Divine Providence is sometimes a difficult thing for us to master, but it is a goal we should all have.  God answers all prayer, but sometimes in a way that we might not understand, or even notice.

Meanwhile, we should take the opportunity of this Chair of Unity Octave to re-evaluate our own position on the subject.  If it’s so very important that we be within the one fold of the Catholic Church, under the one shepherd (the Pope), how is it that we are all sitting here today, blissfully oblivious to the fact that we do not accept this current “pope” as our spiritual leader, and that we are very definitely not in his fold?  Remember, that outside the Church there is no salvation.  So it’s very important that we understand the position we have taken, and why it’s the right one.  The older folks here today don’t me to tell you why you’re here—you made the choice long ago and for all the right reasons.  But spare a thought for the younger members of our congregation, those who blindly followed their family to church because Mom and Dad told them “that’s what we do.”  At some point in their lives, our children need to know more than that.  Their eternal salvation depends on knowing that they are not just following their parents into error and sinful apostasy from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, but are actually doing the will of God by preserving the faith, the sacraments and true worship of that Church.  If you haven’t explained why that’s the case yet, it’s perhaps time, depending on their age and intelligence, to bring them into the loop; to help them out with a few little history lessons, catechism comparisons between what was and what now is in that awful post-Conciliar Church that the world calls Catholic, but that we know isn’t.

One example we can give you younger people, which itself is enough to demonstrate the non-Catholic nature of Pope Francis’s Church is their view on Church Unity, and the heresy they espouse by claiming one can save one’s soul by being a member of a non-Catholic sect.  That’s just one heresy they hold dear, and their pope is a firm believer in it, going so far as to reprimand his clergy for trying to convert people to the Catholic Church.

Allow me to hit you with another example which hit the news this past week.  It concerns a lady in Holland, a politician called Lilianne Ploumen.  We first heard of Ms. Lilianne back in 2010, when an openly homosexual man was denied communion in a Dutch cathedral.  Ms. Lilianne, being a radical supporter of homosexual rights, responded by urging homosexuals to show up in droves at the Cathedral and disrupt the Mass in protest, shouting obscenities and anti-Catholic slogans.  Last year, Ms. Lilianne founded a pro-abortion organization called She Decides.  Its sole reason for existing is to offer funding and support for other organizations that “provide, facilitate, or campaign for abortion.”  But why, you may ask, am I picking on this lady in particular?  Because Pope Francis himself picked her out.  Not, however, to chastise her for her diabolical beliefs and life’s work, but to confer upon her one of the Vatican’s highest honors, the title of “Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great!”

Just listen to the words of her investiture ceremony, and try and get your heads round the perverse logic of the new Church… “Membership in the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great is conferred as a reward for service to the Holy See and the Church on gentlemen and ladies of proven loyalty who must maintain unswerving fidelity to God, the Supreme Pontiff, the Holy See and the Church.  Becoming a Knight Commander does not merely mean receiving a title of honor—even though it is well deserved—but fighting evil, promoting good, and defending the weak and oppressed against injustice.”

Everyone in this congregation, young and old, must surely recognize that we can have no part with a Church that not only insults God in this way, but insults even our own simple intelligence.  We know, instantly and instinctively, that Ms. Lilianne can hardly be defending the weak and oppressed when at the same time she is actively campaigning to have them aborted.

So let’s pray our prayers today that European Protestants may return to the Church.  Not the false pro-ecumenism, pro-homosexual, pro-abortion Church of Pope Francis and Ms. Lilianne Ploumen, but the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Church he founded on the Rock of Peter, the one we belong to, the one we’re attending here today, with the true Faith, the true Sacraments, the true Moral Values that God gave us.  Let’s not be tempted, not even for a moment, to wonder if we’re in the wrong place.  Outside the Church there is no salvation.  Outside these walls, and those of other traditional chapels who keep the faith, what salvation should we expect?  Can we save our souls by being anywhere else, but in a church that preserves the eternal truths and prays to restore them?  Each of you belongs deciding for yourself.  Make sure you do!