Can we be real a minute? What is the ratio of clergy to Catholic lay persons in the Philippines? Is it a reasonable expectation that a priest would know the details of the daily life of his flock?
Then that church is much too big. In such a situation, most of the people are not genuine Christians anyway, so the ministers are training dogs (2 Peter 2:22) and washing hogs, instead of feeding sheep.
We are told we make too much of our clergy, just before we are told our clergy don't control their parishioners enough.
The truth is that we trust God. If someone who is not a Christian presents himself at the Eucharist, all unbeknownst to the priest, he eats and drinks judgment. What should we add to that to make it more severe? We hope that Christ's justice will be perfected in His mercy to the sinner.
In our churches the architectural focus is not on the place where the clergyman stands, but (usually) on the altar or the tabernacle. It is not so much in our clergy as in the Lord's self offering that we place our hope. And I daresay some do so in a manipulative and superstitious way.
Is it not the custom in many Baptist congregations to have an "altar call" as part of nearly every service? Does that not assume that some there have not been born again? Do the deacons return the monetary offerings made by those who have not been locally baptized? Are they denied a seat?
If you allow the unconverted to attend your worship, if you do not know whether or not they are converted, how is it that we must know whether some syncretist is receiving our sacraments? May we not share your hope that the Word of God will one day break through to their hearts?
And, as I said before, why should we worry greatly? We do what we can. We admit them to our churches hoping that one day God will yank their chain. Is it wrong to commend to God those who come to us with very mixed motives? It is He, after all, who vivifies, not we. Should we complain because God does not act on our timetable?
I know a guy who boasts -- BOASTS! -- that his father took a candle-stick off the altar and swung it into a priest's stomach because the priest said that he, being a Lutheran, could not receive the sacrament. Shall I refer him to you so that you will defend the priest and chastise the father for his criminal assault?
It is increasingly clear that whatever your side says, for some of you the unforgivable sin is not being Protestant enough and not doing things as Protestants do and, irony of ironies, not giving our priests MORE authority to discipline and to excommunicate.
I thank God that we cannot win for losing, because His victory is made perfect in our defeat.
Then that is not the Church of Jesus Christ.
Mark 16: 15 He said to them, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.
If your church does not follow the commands of Jesus, whose commands does it follow?