CAPG's Blog 

Oh, how sad would be the state of society were the Popes, the bishops and priests to be banished from the earth! The bonds that unite the husband and wife, the child and the parent, the friend and the friend would be broken. Peace and justice would flee from the earth. Robbery, murder, hatred, lust, and all the other crimes condemned by the Gospel, would prevail. Faith would no longer elevate the souls of men to heaven. Hope, the sweet consoler of the afflicted, of the widow and the orphan, would flee away, and in he stead would reign black despair, terror, and suicide. Where would we find the sweet virtue of charity, if the Popes, the bishops and priests were to disappear forever? Where would we find that charity which consoles the poor and forsaken, which lovingly dies the tears of the widow and the orphan; that charity which soothes the sick man in his sufferings, and binds up the wounds of the bleeding defender of his country? Where would we find that charity which casts a spark of divine fire into the hearts of so many religious, bidding them abandon home, friends, and everything that is near and dear to them in this world , to go among strangers, among savage tribes, and gain there, in return for their heroism, nothing but outrage, suffering and death?

Where, I ask, would we find this charity, if the Popes, the bishops and priests were to disappear forever?

Leave a parish for many years without a priest, and the people thereof will become the blind victims of error, of superstition, and of all kinds of vices.

Show me an age, a country, a nation without priests, and I will show you an age, a country, a nation without morals, without virtue. Yes, if "Religion, Science, Liberty, and Justice, Principle and Right, " are not empty sounds - if they have a meaning, they owe their energetic existence in the world to the "salt of the earth" to the Popes, bishops and priests.

Source: The Catholic Priest, Rev. Michael Muller C.S.S.R

Thrones and scepters and crowns have withstood the hierarchy of the Church; but, immutable, like God, who laid its foundation, it is the firm, unshaken center round which the weal and woe of nations move - weal if they adhere to it - woe if they separate from it.

If the world takes from the Pope, the bishops, and priests of the Catholic Church, the cross of gold, they will bless the world with one of wood. If necessary, popes, bishops and priests can suffer and die for the welfare of the world, as Jesus suffered and died. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is immortal.

Source: The Catholic Priest, Rev. Michael Muller C.S.S.R

The Faithful invoke Mary as their Mother, but they invoke Her as private individuals: Priests, on the contrary, invoke Mary, not only as private individuals, but also in the capacity of public ministers of the Church, and in the name of the Church. It is certain that in celebrating Mass, in reciting their office, and in other functions they shine with a splendor which the laity cannot possess, because (as St. Ignatius the Martyr says) they are nearer to the light -  they are, as it were, clothed with the light. Now, the Church continually charges Priests to invoke Mary; and, however much faith may sometimes languish, Mary has ever been held in honor and special veneration. How great, then, will be Her liberality to Priests who strive to honor Her, not only in the Church's name, but in the Church's spirit! Therefore, let us invoke Her as our tender Mother, and be assured that She will protect hose who labor for the Church under Her shadow (as Blessed Amadeus says), and that She will, at least, obtain for us strength to bear our tribulations. Let us be assured that She has a special right over us, because Her Son has communicated His rights to Her. Let us, then, call upon Her for succor with the greatest confidence, and She will fill us with grace, and will not refuse us help in fit time.

Source: Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, Oblate of Saint Charles Angelo Scotti 

A priest should love the liturgy, both for his own spiritual life and for that of his people; and likewise for the outward glory of God, for it is the official life of the Church.

A priest should be educated in the liturgical sense that he in turn may educate his people. If he has little taste for liturgy he is wanting in the fullness of his vocation. It is certainly not an over-statement that much more trouble might be taken with the liturgical services that is often the case. To learn to be at home on the sanctuary and to move about quietly and in a dignified way requires a little effort, but presents no great difficulty. Yet often we see it far otherwise.

Source: The Priestly Vocation, Right Rev. Bernard Ward

Blessed are those servants who have had nothing else in view but that through their ministry every knee should bend at the name of Jesus and every tongue should confess His divinity.

Blessed are those servants who, wholly intent upon the word and prayer, have esteemed all things else as dross, so long as they obtained the glory of God and the salvation of souls. 

But you indolent servants, useless servants, blush and be confounded. Far from being zealous you flee from labor.

You love a bountiful recompense but not the labors of the ministry, a well-furnished table but not the altar, reading but not the tribunal of penance, conversation but not prayer, walking but not study, amusement but not the care of the flock.

You are ever ready to take part in worldly affairs, but every spiritual duty finds you lukewarm and indolent.

I excavate the walls of your hearts and I find written thereon: Oh, that I did not have to pray! Of, that I did not have to teach catechism! Of, that I did not have to preach! Of, that nobody would come to confession!

Wretched men! How can you call yourselves priests? How can you call yourselves the ministers of God? You do not build up but destroy: You do not heal but kill: You do not save but ruin my sheep.

Source: An Epitome of the Priestly Life, Fr. CLaude Arvisenet

My son, let thy modesty be known to all men; walk as you have the model prescribed by the Church.

If thou dost not conform to the law of the Church, thou shalt be as the heathen and the publican; see therefore that thou despise not the law of thy Mother; she has decreed what shall be the color and the style of thy clothes; observe her rules.

She has prescribed simplicity and becomingness in priestly attire; comply with her rules; she discountenances the wearing of soiled and tattered garments; cast them aside.

How, my son, has the gold become dim, the fine color been changed?

How many there are among my priests who are ashamed of my uniform! They belong to the royal priesthood and they disdain to wear a royal crown.

They have renounced the world and yet they love to wear clothes of the most worldly pattern; they are my soldiers and scarcely gave they enlisted and been enrolled when they rebel and cast aside my uniform.

They are my servants yet they strive to please men; they are clerics and they appear as bridegrooms; they are of the world, therefore they love the world and the world loves them.

O foolish men! They are esteemed indeed by worldlings, but they are an abomination in my sight; they are ashamed of me before men; I shall be ashamed of them before my Father who is in heaven.

O my son, avoid the society of such disedifying clerics; put far from thee the vanity and price of their demeanor.

Follow not the example of those, my son, who do not give themselves wholly to worldly vanity, but who nevertheless are undisciplined and regardless of rules, saying that they do not bother about these trifles.

Neither follow the example of those, my son, who by their slovenly attire rather provoke laughter than excite veneration.

But study and imitate those who by the becomingness of their external apparel show forth the interior integrity of their lives; let thy feet walk in their footsteps.

Source: An Epitome of the Priestly Life, Claude Arvisenet

 Who can expect the flock to prosper when its shepherd has sunk so deep into the bowels of the devil....Who will make a mistress of a cleric, or a woman of a man? Whom by his lust, will consign a son whom he had spiritually begotten for God to slavery under the iron law of Satanic tyranny?

Saint Peter Damian

Blessed is the nation, blessed is the people to whom the Lord has given a pastor after his own heart! Under his rule the crooked ways become straight, the rough ways plain and all flesh sees the salvation of God.The field are filled with plenty, the beautiful places of the wilderness grow fat, and the hills are girded about with joy.

Blessed world, that received from a most merciful Lord the twelve apostles!

Behold, my son, the power, the force, the influence of a holy priest. Mark you, they were but twelve and their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. Though they were lambs, they conquered a world full of wolves; though they were but simple fishermen, they illuminated but their teachings a world shrouded in darkness. Though they were without staff or weapon, they overturned idols and temples; though they were of lowly birth, they are honored by the world itself. But they were holy; they were without stain, rich in chastity, assiduous in prayer, devoted to their ministry, imitators of Christ, filled with His spirit and His zeal.

O blessed land that possessed the twelve apostles!

Alas, wretched world of today, that languishes under the ministry of so many thousands of priests!

Source: An Epitome of the Priestly Life, Fr. Claude Arvisenet.

The pastoral office is in itself a discipline of perfection. For first of all it is a life of abnegation of self. A pastor has so many obediences to fulfill, as he has souls to serve. The good and the evil, the sick and the whole, the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, the worldly and the unworldly - who are not always wise- the penitent and the impenitent, the converted and the unconverted, the lapsed and the relapsed, the obdurate and the defiant, all must be watched over - none may be neglected, still less cast off - always, at all times and in all ways possible. St. Philip used to say that a priest should have no time of his own, and that many of his most consoling conversations came to him out of hours at unseasonable moments. If he had sent them away because they came out of time, or at supper time and the like, they might have been lost. Then again, the trials of temper, patience, self-control in bearing with the strange and inconsiderate minds that come to him, and the demands made upon this strength and endurance day and night in the calls of the sick and dying, coming often one after another when for a moment he has gone to rest; the weary and continual importunity of people and of letters, till the sound of the bell or the knock at the door is a constant foreboding, too surely fulfilled; all these things make a pastor's life as wearisome, and, strange to say, as isolated as if he were in the desert. No sackcloth so mortifies the body as this life of perpetual self-abnegation mortifies the will. But when the will is mortified, the servant is like his Master, and his Master is the exemplar of all perfection.

Source: The Priestly Vocation, Right Rev. Bernard Ward

What may deprive a young priest of the reverence and trust of the faithful?

The faults of boyhood: levity, thoughtlessness, immaturity, precipitance, an inordinate love of sports and games, a lack of repose.

 What makes a young priest respected? Seriousness of manney, maturity of thought, earnestness of purpose, steadiness in carrying out all that appertains to duty; also, learning, piety, enlifhtened zeal, self-respect, a sense of authority tempered by modesty: auctoritas modesta as the Pontifical says in the rite of ordination; finally, the religious spirit, that is, the spirit of reverence imparting a tone of thoughtfulness and deliberation to the whole man.

Each of these helps to dispel the unfavorable impression which might attach to the youthful priest, and therefore it becomes his duty to cultivate them sedulously in the early years of his ministry. (...)

An thus the number of his years will be lost to sight, and the faithful will see, listen to, and love in him the man of God.

Source: Daily Thoughts for Priests, Fr. John Baptist Hogan