For example, here's the disunity within Presbyterianism:
Posted on 06/22/2011 8:21:13 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Of all the bizarre comments contained in John Corapi's rambling speech on Monday, there was one that struck me as especially strange, and particularly sad.
Near the beginning, when he makes clear that he's not actually leaving the priesthood, but only suspending his public work as a priest (and dropping the title "Father"), he shrugs off the impact this will have on his life. Nothing much will change, he says, explaining that he really had little to do with the sacraments, anyway—saying mass, hearing confession, anointing the sick.
"I didn't do very much of that quite honestly in the twenty years that I did minister," he says, adding, "90 percent of what I did in the past did not require ordination. Speaking through social communication—radio, TV, so forth—that's not ministry, strictly speaking. My particular mission was speaking, writing, and teaching—not so much in the sacraments, but outside of them, in conjunction with them. So what I'm going to be doing in the future is pretty much the same thing."
Well. I have to appreciate his candor. But off the top of my head, I can't think of any priest I know who has so effectively and completely marginalized—even minimized—the most transcendent aspect of his priesthood: celebrating the sacraments. Any one who has been given the great gift of Holy Orders knows that ordination is not strictly about what we do, but about what we are, and what we become. And yet, a priest becomes, by sacred ordination, alter Christus, another Christ. Fundamental to that is grace—the grace to reconcile the penitent, anoint the sick, baptize new Catholics and, most humbling and overwhelming of all, transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the sacrifice of the mass.
To John Corapi, it seems, that really didn't matter so much. It didn't seem to matter much to his superiors, either, who allowed him to live apart—a Black Sheepdog or a Lone Wolf.
At a time when parishes are starving for priests, and some men are spending hours every Sunday on the road, shuttling from parish to parish to celebrate mass and hear confessions, John Corapi, like Bartleby the Scrivener, shrugged and said, "I prefer not to."
And that, evidently, was fine. He had other things to do. He traveled, he spoke, he recorded, he wrote books. He strode across stadium stages to thunderous applause and cried out for repentance and faithfulness, and told again and again of his astonishing journey from rags to riches to rags to redemption. He confronted medical crises, and fought legal battles, and emerged even stronger. And that was fine, too. He had something to say, and thousands, if not millions, who wanted to hear it. He was an ardent and impassioned defender of the faith.
But I can't escape the feeling that something was missing, and that Corapi himself was missing something.
Talk to any priest you know. Ask him: "What's the best part about being a priest? What do you love about it?"
I did that the other day, after the Corapi news broke. I talked to a handful of priests. Again and again, I got the same answers: "Saying mass." "Hearing confession." "Offering the sacraments."
Hearing that, and thinking of John Corapi, I thought of other priests, in other circumstances.
I thought of Fr. Henri Perrin, who wrote so movingly of secretly celebrating mass on Palm Sunday in 1944 in a German concentration camp:
When I held the sacrifice between my fingers, I was holding up to God in complete faith the lives of all the men sleeping round me."
I thought of the priests of Dachau, who were forbidden to say mass, but did so anyway, risking their lives. According to one account:
During the time that the Polish priests were not allowed to say Mass, they asked the priest from Block 26, who was in charge of the chapel, to give them hosts and wine so they could celebrate Mass in secret. The Polish priests who worked on the plantation (farm) at Dachau would kneel on the ground and pretend to be weeding. They had a small portable altar which one of the priests would press into the ground. The priests would kneel down and receive Communion from their own hands.
And I thought of the Vietnamese Cardinal Nguyen van Thaun, who spent decades in prison, facing persecution and risking death by secretly saying mass for himself and his fellow prisoners. In 2008, his sister described his life behind bars:
During an interview with the media after his release, he was asked what his secret strength had been that kept him alive and sane. His answer was always, "The Eucharist." He explained how when he was arrested, he had to leave immediately, empty-handed. The following day he was allowed to write to his faithful to ask for some personal effects. He wrote: "Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomach pain." They understood right away. A few days later, the guards handed him a small container addressed to him, and labeled "Medicine for stomach aliments." He also received another small container containing small pieces of Holy Host.With three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of his hand, he would celebrate Mass. "Each time I celebrated Mass, I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with Him the bitter chalice" (Testimony of Hope). And those were the most beautiful Masses of his life.
In Testimony of Hope he continued: In the re-education camp, we were divided into groups of 50 prisoners. We slept on a common bed, and everyone had the right to 50 cm of space. We managed to make sure there were Catholics around me. At 9:30 pm, we had to turn off the light. It was then that I would bend over the bed to celebrate Mass by heart, and I distributed communion by passing my hand under the mosquito net. We even made little bags with the aluminum foil from cigarette packs to preserve the Holy Host and take it to others. The Eucharistic Jesus was always present in my shirt pocket.
I have to wonder if John Corapi knew that sort of consolation. Did he even care? For these and other priests, the Eucharist was all. For John Corapi, it was, at best, 10 percent of his priesthood.
Sorry. That's just not enough. And it may be one reason, among many, why he now finds himself in his present state.
This Sunday, the church will celebrate the great feast of Corpus Christi, honoring the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. (In an interesting irony, Corpus Christi is also the name of the diocese where Corapi's order is headquartered; it is the bishop of Corpus Christi whom Corapi attacks in his taped statements.)
This is a time to cherish what we have been given in the Eucharist, and to look at Jesus Christ, present to us in the Flesh—more present to us than any man, or even many people we know and love on earth. It might be a useful time to remember, as well, the sacrifices that have been made to make this holy sacrament possible—the blood that's been shed, the tears that have been wept, the risks that have been taken by great priests like Nguyen van Thaun and Henri Perrin.
It might be a time to pray, as well, for John Corapi.
"I didn't do very much of that quite honestly in the twenty years that I did minister," he says, adding, "90 percent of what I did in the past did not require ordination. Speaking through social communication—radio, TV, so forth—that's not ministry, strictly speaking. My particular mission was speaking, writing, and teaching—not so much in the sacraments, but outside of them, in conjunction with them. So what I'm going to be doing in the future is pretty much the same thing."
I can't think of any priest I know who has so effectively and completely marginalized—even minimized—the most transcendent aspect of his priesthood: celebrating the sacraments. Any one who has been given the great gift of Holy Orders knows that ordination is not strictly about what we do, but about what we are, and what we become. And yet, a priest becomes, by sacred ordination, alter Christus, another Christ. Fundamental to that is grace—the grace to reconcile the penitent, anoint the sick, baptize new Catholics and, most humbling and overwhelming of all, transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the sacrifice of the mass....
....At a time when parishes are starving for priests, and some men are spending hours every Sunday on the road, shuttling from parish to parish to celebrate mass and hear confessions, John Corapi, like Bartleby the Scrivener, shrugged and said, "I prefer not to." And that, evidently, was fine. He had other things to do. He traveled, he spoke, he recorded, he wrote books. He strode across stadium stages to thunderous applause and cried out for repentance and faithfulness, and told again and again of his astonishing journey from rags to riches to rags to redemption. He confronted medical crises, and fought legal battles, and emerged even stronger. And that was fine, too.
“I didn’t do very much of that quite honestly in the twenty years that I did minister,” he says, adding, “90 percent of what I did in the past did not require ordination. Speaking through social communication—radio, TV, so forth—that’s not ministry, strictly speaking. My particular mission was speaking, writing, and teaching—not so much in the sacraments, but outside of them, in conjunction with them. So what I’m going to be doing in the future is pretty much the same thing.”
####
Sounds like an honest statement of fact to me.
Fr. Corapi is not “marginalizing” the Sacraments, he is simply stating that his PARTICULAR mission did not involve their administration.
So this author wanted the Father to give up his very effective international, public ministry to serve as a parish priest somewhere? Not to minimize the fundamental and crucial importance of parish priests, but Fr. Corapi had a very useful and constructive role as well.
1. Consecrate (the Eucharist)
2. Shrive
3. Anoint
Those are 3 the functions of the priesthood. Everything else, the 1000 other things, are not ESSENTIAL to being a priest. Some are pastors, some are teachers, some are theologians, some are counselors, some are missionaries, some are in community, that is a religious order, some are diocesan, some are assigned to special work, pro-life, hospital chaplain, prison ministry, Indian reservations and poverty relief, etc...but Ordination in Holy Orders comes down to those 3 things. If a man did only those for 50 years he could be a successful priest.
Fr. Corapi has always seen the priesthood as a vehicle to become a multi-millionaire, he has never lived in community with his Order, he’s a maverick with a private (for profit) company. This is unheard of. Even “superstar” priests subordinate themselves to their superior (or bishop depending on status) and usually hand money back to the religious order, or operate as non-profits for a particular cause.
The cause here is Corapi’s personal wealth and ego gratification. As my earlier posts have explained, to some scorn, he never should have been ordained.
Nailed it in one.
Excellent article. Thanks for posting it.
Was was not familiar with Fr. Corapi until this crisis arose. At first, I was sympathetic to him, and to the bishops’ ill-considered practice of considering priests guilty until they are proven innocent.
But the more I hear of him, and read what he says, the more I feel impelled to warn that Catholics should keep their distance and recognize that their true home is the Catholic Church, not one member of that Church who seems inclined to rebel and take pride in himself rather than put first things first.
Take care. I no longer think this guy can be trusted. I certainly pray for his well being, his exoneration from all false charges, and his faithful return to the Church. But I’m afraid that his self-image as a “black sheep dog” is all too suggestive of the mistakes he is now making. And if he goes off the rails this quickly, how sound was he in the first place?
I was just going to say, “Isn’t saying Mass and consecrating the Eucharist the number one duty of a priest? Or is it preaching the Gospel?
Then I saw your post.
His actions here are very odd, and hard to fathom. It is almost like he was planing this move anyway, and the suit moved up the time frame.
Bishop Fulton Sheen comes to mind in the sense that he was without parallel a great evangelist but his commitment to the Mass was daily. It is the Eucharist that distinguishes Catholicism from the 35,000 or so other Christian denominations. Sans Eucharist, Catholic priests who evangelize play the role of the “Billy Grahams” of this world and all the celebrity and vapidity that it entails.
Be careful, the Corapi cultist will reject any notion of wrong doing and claim you are not a Catholic or are the Devil for questioning his actions.
I seem to recall from ¨Father Smith Instructs Jackson¨ - a conversion guide I studied in the mid-60s - that saying mass, or one´s participation in it daily, was a requirement for priests. Am I wrong, or has this changed?
35,000, huh?
Let's grant that Catholic apologist-types beat the 33,000 denominations drum too much and don't really pay attention to the commonalities that exist in much of Protestant theology. Let us also grant that Catholic apologist types often don't pay attention, in such polemics, to the divisions in our own house.
-- from the thread The Perspicuity of Scripture and Other Creation Myths
1. Do not allege that there are 33,000 Protestant denominations. This tally comes from the 2001 World Christian Encyclopedia, and it includes all denominations and paradenominations which self-identify as Christian, including Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Old Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Gnostics, Bogomils, etc. And even so, the number is too high. The World Christian Encyclopedia artificially inflates the number of Catholic "denominations" by counting Eastern Churches in communion with Rome as separate denominations. It likewise inflates the number of Eastern Orthodox "denominations" by counting Churches in communion with each other as distinct........even if we could arrive at an accurate tally for Protestant denominations (20,000?), we still could not blame the whole of that number on Sola Scriptura. Some of these churches share substantial unity in faith, even if they are juridically independent (perhaps due to geography). And much of the disunity of faith within Protestantism, at least in the developed world, stems from efforts to subordinate the authority of Scripture (e.g., to various sexual perversions). In reality, if every Protestant denomination were serious and consistent in affirming and applying the rule of Sola Scriptura, the spectrum of Protestant belief would be significantly narrower. It bears emphasizing: the only thing for which we can directly blame Sola Scriptura is the extent to which it fails to provide unity in true faith and morals to those who sincerely adhere to it, e.g., "orthodox" Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals, Campbellites, etc.
-- from the thread Unsound Sticks, or, Arguments Catholics Shouldn't Use
When this figure first surfaced among Roman Catholic apologists, it started at 20,000 Protestant denominations, grew to 23,000 Protestant denominations, then to 25,000 Protestant denominations. More recently, that figure has been inflated to 28,000, to over 32,000. These days, many Roman Catholic apologists feel content simply to calculate a daily rate of growth (based on their previous adherence to the original benchmark figure of 20,000) that they can then use as a basis for projecting just how many Protestant denominations there were, or will be, in any given year........If the Roman Catholic apologist wants instead to cite 8,196 idiosyncrasies within Protestantism, then he must be willing to compare that figure to at least 2,942 (perhaps upwards of 8,000 these days) idiosyncrasies within Roman Catholicism. In any case, he cannot compare the one ecclesial tradition of Roman Catholicism to 25,000, 8,196, or even twenty-one Protestant denominations; for Barrett places Roman Catholicism (as a single ecclesial tradition) on the same level as Protestantism (as a single ecclesial tradition)....
....In short, Roman Catholic apologists have hurriedly, carelessly—and, as a result, irresponsibly—glanced at Barrett’s work, found a large number (22,189), and arrived at all sorts of absurdities that Barrett never concluded. One can only hope that, upon reading this critique, Roman Catholic apologists will finally put this argument to bed. The more likely scenario, however, is that the death of this argument will come about only when Evangelicals consistently point out this error—and correct it—each time it is raised by a Roman Catholic apologist. Sooner or later they will grow weary of the embarrassment that accompanies citing erroneous figures in a public forum.
-- from the thread 30,000 Protestant Denominations?
For example, here's the disunity within Presbyterianism:
Who is this guy and why all the uproar?
A high-profile "rock star" Catholic Priest, heralded for being a conservative, a charismatic speaker, and a fire under the feet of Catholic bishops. He appears to have been an unrepentent snake oil salesman the whole time.
These earlier threads might help to fill in some of the blanks:
New Information on the Fr. Corapi Situation
Voris, Corapi, And The Ned Flanderification Of Catholic Commentary
Questions About Father Corapi's Military Records Raised, Again
"The Greatest" of Falls? Was Corapi Complicit in The Euteneuer Scandal? [Catholic Caucus]
Official EWTN Statement Regarding Fr.John Corapi [Catholic Caucus]
Statement of Santa Cruz Media, Inc. Relative to Fr. Corapi’s Suspension
A Call for Prayer [Fr. Corapi Accused of Sexual Misconduct][Catholic Caucus]
I don't think Alex is Catholic. Presbyterian?
I don’t know who Alex is. I am referring to the Corapi Cult that has been attacking EWTN, the Church, SOLT, and his Bishop.
That is a very good point, and good distinction between a Priest and any other preacher or minister.
Regarding Bishop Fulton Sheen, in addition to Mass, he also kept a private daily holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
A priest must first be holy, then his other works or projects will be guided by the Holy Spirit, not his own ideas, which could be sincere but confused without that inner core.
This is true. His book “Life of Christ” is beautifully written.
No, priests are not required to say Mass daily. They do have daily prayers to say, called the “Liturgy of the Hours” or the “Divine Office.”
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