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Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Raleigh NC

"The priest is a man of the people, a father, a friend, a guide, a defender. It is his duty to commend good, to denounce evil, to lead the people into virtue, to keep them from vice, to guard the fold from the ravening wolves, to feed the sheep with life-giving food, to train them in the ways that lead to strength and beauty of goodness.

What a work the Christian priesthood had done in the history of the world! It preached the Gospel to pagan Rome and Jewish Palestine, it converted Constantine and his empire; and evangelized the barbarians; it brought the Gospel of Christ to every nation; it built the Christian altar by the running brook, on the hillside and in the mountain fastness, that everywhere the people might have salvation; near the altar; it built the Christian school; it preserved letters and science, and civilized the world.

The saints of old, who taught men morality, established Christianity and ruled the Christian Church, were priests. The missionaries, who gave up life and its ambitions to consecrate themselves to the service of God, were saintly priests of the Christian Church. They built the Church of God into the life of every nation; they have brought the Church to this land and to our day. We are the successors to that same priesthood, and upon us falls the same responsibility.

The priest of today must be prepared to meet the exigencies of the times; he must have the spirit of his vocation and courage of his convictions, manfully and fearlessly standing for the truth. He is called to be a leader."

Source: Our Church, Her Children and Institutions, 1908 By Rt. Rev. Thomas. J. Conaty, D.D.

Prayer for Spiritual Fathers

Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for thou faithful priests and bishops, whose spiritual fatherhood and example of fidelity, self-sacrifice, and devotion is so vital to the faith of your people. May our spiritual fathers be guided by the example of St. John Vianney. Give them valiant faith in the face of confusion and conflict, hope in time of trouble and sorrow, and steadfast love for Thee, for their families, and for all Thou people throughout the world.

May the light of Thy Truth shine through their lives and their good works. Assist all spiritual fathers, that through Thy Grace they may steadily grow in holiness and in knowledge and understanding of Thy Truth. May they generously impart this knowledge to those who rely on them, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Source: CAPG Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests: Curé of Ars St. John Marie Vianney, a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ's flock.

"The Pope had very special and peculiar difficulty in dealing with the Catholic Modernists; for Modernism was very insidious in its methods. The Modernists said: there may be difficulties about the dogmas of faith from the point of view of philosophy and historical criticism; they may not be philosophically and historically true; but, even so, their religious value remains, for they can be believed by faith. To the ordinary faithful Faith meant intellectual assent to truths on the authority of the word of God. It seemed, then, as if the Catholic Modernists were not impugning the intellectual truth of the dogmas of faith. But the Modernists meant by Faith the use of dogmas as rules of action; we should live and act, they said, as if Christ were God, as if He had arisen from the dead, as if He were really present in the Blessed Eucharist. There was then an equivocal use of the word "faith".

The true faith of the Church was being undermined. Intellectual assent to the dogmas of faith on the authority of God would be impossible if the dogmas themselves were philosophically or historically false. Thus Modernism was a formula or prescription for an easy imperceptible death to Christianity. But Pope Pius X. intervened, and saved his people from the poisoned prescriptions of the Modernists." The Catholic Book Bulletin, Vol 1 P33-34 1911, Modernism and the Old Faith by Very Rev. Fr. Daniel Goghlan, D.D.

Prayer to the Holy Angels for Parishes
All you legions and choirs of Angels, please make haste to come to the aid and defense of our One Holy Roman Catholic Church. Led by St. Michael, may She be protected from destruction within by all modernistic attempts that try to diminish the true presence of God and take away His proper and due respect! In particular, come to the aid of my parish (name your parish) that it may remain or be remade to be a place of reverence and a stronghold from which the One True Triune God may continue to lead and strengthen us. Amen.

 What would happen to a priest already sharing in the priesthood of Christ by reason of his ordination, if he refused to share in Christ’s condition of victim? He would certainly be falling away from the priestly ideal: his life would become disordered, disturbed, and confused. He would remain a minister of Christ but without a sincere love for his affectionate Master. No longer a man of God but a man of the world, a man whose life has become vain, superficial, barren. This deplorable state of sterility reveals in an even better light the fruitfulness of a genuine apostolate, just as it is easier to appreciate the value of justice when we see the suffering resulting from injustice. Every priest should ask for the grace to be a victim in the way God wants him to be, to suffer patiently whatever God has willed for him from all eternity, so that he takes up his cross each day not simply as a faithful follower of Christ but as a priest standing in the place of Christ himself. He must undergo a mystical death before his physical death.


Source: The Priest in Union with Christ, Father Reginal Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

"Ah, yes! "It is the Mass that matters" for us Catholics; and herein lies the explanation of the sinister efforts of the enemies of our holy Faith to render the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice impossible. For, says St. Bonaventure, "take away the Sacrament, and what will there be left in the world but error and infidelity?"
(...)
"But by this Sacrament," continues the Saint, "the Church stands, faith is confirmed, the Christian religion and Divine worship flourish." (On the Preparation for Mass, I i 3)"

Source: The psychology of Practical Godlessness The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Volume 47 edited by James Andrew Corcoran, Patrick John Ryan, Edmond Francis Prendergast

"Even the Devil came to Ars. Indeed, he had a reason. By the mouth of a possessed woman, he exclaimed one day to the Curé, “How thou makest me suffer! If there were three men on earth like thyself, my kingdom would be destroyed.” Father Vianney was outwitting the proud devil by saving so many souls. The kingdom of Heaven seemed to be growing faster than the kingdom of Hell. Frustrated, the devil would roar like a bull, growl like a bear, or snarl like a dog in an effort to intimidate the Curé. With a fearful voice he would cry out: “Vianney! Vianney! Potato eater! Ah, thou art not yet dead! I shall get thee, all right.”

More here

"Our Lord says: "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He send forth laborers into His harvest." (Matt. 9.38). Remember that a priest is the salvation or the perdition of his flock. In the Old Testament we read that when other scourges were of no avail to turn the people, hardened in sin, from their evil ways, God sent upon them the heaviest scourge of all, wicked and corrupt priests. Let us therefore make it our continual prayer, that we may have good priests. The Ember days are appointed for this purpose. Special prayer should be offered to the Holy Ghost, for unless a priest is enlightened by the Holy Spirit we may apply to him the words: "If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit." (Matt. 15.14)."

The Catechism Explained: An exhaustive Exposition of the Christian Religion by F.r Francis Spirago 1899

Papal Bull: Horrendum illud scelus ( August 30, 1568):

"That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were destroyed by fire through divine condemnation, causes us most bitter sorrow and shocks our mind, impelling us to repress such a crime with the greatest possible zeal.

Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this decree: "Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature, given that the wrath of God falls over the sons of perfidy, be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery" (chap. 4, X, V, 31).

So that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces civil law.

Therefore, wishing to pursue with greater rigor than we have exerted since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have sunk into this abyss."

Effigy of Sainte Louise de Marillac at Rue du Bac, Paris France

" The Son of God took a human body in the womb of the Blessed Virgin in a state of innocence more perfect than that of the first man. This action was sufficient to satisfy divine justice for the disobedience of our first parents and to reveal to us the truth of the plan of God expressed in the words, “My delight is to be with the children of men.”

   Nevertheless, this did not satisfy His great love for us. He desired an inseparable union of divine nature with human nature. He accomplished this after the Incarnation by the admirable institution of the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar in which the fullness of the divinity dwells continually in the Second Person of the most Blessed Trinity. This union is a means for uniting the Creator to His creature. However, all do not participate in this mystery because free will enables man to bring about his own damnation by following his evil inclinations and the temptations of the devil, or to earn his salvation by grace which applies to him the merits of the Son of God.

  We have reason to believe that the assurance which Our Lord gave us that He would always be with us was designed to sanctify souls by means of this continual, albeit invisible, presence and by the application of the merits of His actions to those of His creatures. Our Lord does this either by asking pardon of His Father so as to wash away the sins which we have committed in opposition to the virtues which He Himself practiced, or by rendering the virtuous deeds which men accomplish by the power of His grace pleasing to God by uniting them to His meritorious actions. It seemed to me that it is in this way that the holy humanity of Our Lord is continually present to us. He is among us by the application of His merits and by the sanctification of souls. His presence is like air without which the soul is lifeless. It is thus that I see the Redemption of men in the Incarnation and their sanctification by means of this union of man with God in the person of His Son and by this continual presence, whereby His merits are applied to each soul joined to the personal union of a God to man. All of nature is thereby honored since it causes God to see His image in all mankind, if it has not been disfigured by the refusal of the application of the merits of His Son which sin alone can effect.

  This thought came to me after a long period during which I prayed for a great love for the humanity of Our Lord as a means for moving me to practice His virtues especially gentleness, humility, forbearance and love of my neighbor in order to overcome the sins which I so often commit against them."

Source: Spiritual writings of Louise de Marillac : correspondence and thoughts

"At Castelnuovo, where there was a family gathering and great rejoicing, his mother said to him, what he calls "these memorable words": You are a priest. In saying Mass henceforward you are then nearest to Jesus Christ. Remember, however, that to begin to say Mass means to begin to suffer. You will not realize it at once, but little by little you will see that your mother has told you the truth. I am confident that every day you will pray for me, whether I am living or dead: that is enough for me. Henceforward, think only of the salvation of souls, and don't be troubled in mind about me."

Source:  R.F. O'Connor Venerable Don Bosco The American Catholic Quarterly Review ..., Volume 46 1921

"Pope Pius X is convinced that on the character of the clergy mainly depend the present welfare and the future hopes of religion. He is convinced that in modern times the Church needs ministers of more than ordinary virtue, men who are ever ready to spend themselves for Christ and to suffer hard things for His sake. Hence he observes with alarm the growth of a worldly spirit in some of the clergy - disregard for mental prayer, indifference to spiritual reading, neglect of self-examination - and he foretells with sorrow what will be the bitter fruits of such worldliness. Sacred duties will be callously performed, the light of the faith will be darkened, dangerous novelties will be preferred to sound doctrine, human wisdom will be substituted for the Word of God, and pride and contumacy will take the place of the humility and meekness of Christ."

Source: The Priest of Today, His Ideals and His duties, by Thomas O'Donnell C.M. 1910