Priests are drones in the Hive! of What use are they?
by VP
Posted on Tuesday May 26, 2020 at 01:00AM in Books
Answer: They are of use in saving souls! Certainly, here is an employment which is at least as good as many others.
The mechanic works upon matter; the priest works on the soul. As much as the soul is higher than matter, so much is the priest's work higher than all the labors of the earth.
The priest continues the great labor of the salvation of mankind. Jesus Christ, his God and his Model, began it; His priests continue through all ages.
After His example, the priest goes about doing good. He is a man who belongs to all; his heart, his time, his health, his diligence, his purse, his life, belong to all; above all, to the lowly ones of the earth, to children, to the poor, the neglected, those who weep, and who are friendless. He expects nothing in exchange for this devotedness; most frequently, indeed, he receives only insults, abominable calumnies and ill treatment. True disciple of his Divine Master, he replies only by continuing to do goo.
What a life! What superhuman abnegation!
In public calamities, civil wards, contagious diseases, in times of cholera, when the Protestants ministers and philanthropists think of personal preservation, the priest is to be seen exposing his life and health to relieve and save his brethren; such was Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris, on the barricades; such were Belzunce and St. Charles Borromeo, in the time of the plage at Marseilles and Milan; such, during the cholera in 1832 and 1849, all the clergy of Paris and so many other towns, who made themselves the public servants of the whole people.
This, then, is the use of priests! I should like to know if those who attack them are of more use.
The ungrateful wretches! They are never weary of loading with insults him whom they summon to their bedside in time of sorrow or privation, who has blessed them in their earlier years, and who never ceases to pray for them.
All the miseries of our country arise from our not practicing what the priests teach. And unfortunate France, torn with civil discords and political commotions, may apply to herself the language addressed to the chaplain of one of the Paris prisons by a poor convict, who had returned to God with all his heart. The priest had given him a little Christian's manual. "Ah Father!" he said one day, showing the little book, "If I had known the contents of this, and had practiced these maxims all my life, I should not have done what I have now done, nor should I have been where I now am!"
If France had always known, and if she now knew what priests really do teach, and if she had always practiced those doctrines, and continued doing so, she would not have been tossed about by three or four revolutions in the space of fifty years, and be reduced to ask herself in the present day, Am I about to perish entirely? Can I still hope to be saved from destruction?
She may hope to be saved, if she will again be truly Catholic! She may hope to be saved if she will but take heed to the ministers of Him who SAVES the world.
The priesthood is then the safety of France! For without religion society would be destroyed.
Her children, then, owe honor, veneration, gratitude, more than ever to the priestly character. Those who repulse the idea have not the intelligence of our age or country.
Away with these worn-out prejudices, then. Away with these coarse and injurious epithets, with which the blind impiety of Voltaire and his followers have so long assailed the Catholic Priesthood!
Let us respect our Priests. If we see imperfections, even vices occasionally, among them, let us remember that we must ascribe to the man all that belongs to frailty.
Let us endeavor, in those cases, not to look at the man, to see nothing but the priest; as a priest, he is always worthy of respect, and his ministry is always a holy one; for he is the perpetuator of the office of Jesus Christ, the great High Priest, through successive ages, and it is of him that the Savior has said, " He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Him that sent you."
Source: Short Answer to Common Objections Against Religion, by Louis Gaston Adrien de Segur
