I saw the way the Roman Catholic Church works on three continents. I sat with cardinals in their luxurious limousines as they passed Swiss guards who greeted the Vatican's Damascus Gate leading to the pope's private apartments.
I was present when a pope died and was buried and when his successor was elected and installed. I was standing next to the former Pope Pius XI when Pope Benedict XV made him a cardinal by wearing the imposing cardinal's hat, myself holding in my hand the long purple train of another cardinal then called. I have served as a priest not only in magnificent cathedrals in Europe, but also in Dutch farms in the great South African steppe, as well as in dilapidated barracks churches in the backward regions of Florida.
I was born in 1895 in Dublin. I have no fond childhood memories. Everything was overshadowed by a feeling of constant fear. This fear was related to any religious act exercised by the priest - confession, attending Sunday Mass, fasting food, hell, heaven, purgatory, or death, and the judgment of an angry God.
The Bible was a closed book with seven seals both at school and in church and at home. We did not have the money to buy a Roman Catholic version, usually very expensive, and we did not have the courage to accept a free Bible from a Protestant society. Mainly, the fear associated with every aspect of the Roman Catholic religion helped me make the decision to become a priest. I enrolled for admission and was accepted to the missionary seminary in Mungret, near Limerick.
Doubts
During my studies in Rome, I was assailed for the first time by doubts and mistrust about the pope's interpretation of Christianity. Some of my thoughts back then were: If Rome is the only center of true faith, how is it that true religion is so lacking in its own citizens? Why is there so much atheism, indecency, lawlessness? On the street, we, the students at the seminary of priests, were not shown even the most basic politeness, and even the children of Rome shouted obscene insults behind us. Also, why was there such a great need for priests in Ireland and elsewhere to go into exile in Africa, China, and India as missionaries and papal propaganda, while Rome was swarming with ten thousand priests flaunting themselves in the Vatican offices and not finding enough altars in the four hundred churches in Rome where to read the liturgy? I also wondered why the proudly spoken number of three hundred million Roman Catholics around the world had to be represented in Rome by a college of cardinals, nearly two-thirds of whom are Italians. The forty million citizens of Italy were Catholics by name alone, utterly devoid of a religious mentality. But the twenty million Roman Catholics in the United States, for example, not only faithfully participated in the liturgy, but also contributed a lot of money to the Vatican treasury. However, only three Americans were allowed to be cardinals, mediocre people, but loyal to Rome,
I came to know the intrigues of the Roman clergy in order to win the favor of those in power at the Vatican, their greed for papal honors and for advancement to high positions, I discovered that even among the high dignitaries of the Church were fierce enemies. Every day I encountered many signs that reminded me of the subversive deeds of greedy, ambitious, warrior popes and their lazy politics. There was a Castel di Sant'Angelo or the Gallery of Hadrian, with its walls notched by cannonballs fired by a pope in the Vatican fortress and bombarding another pope defying his anathemas.
The day of my ordination has finally come. It was a long ceremony. Countless rituals, long prayers, and endless psalms confused me. My fingers were consecrated to read the liturgy and then wrapped in fine linen cloth. My head was anointed with oil and wrapped in linen bandages. I was given to touch the golden chalice. I have been given the power to listen to confessions and to forgive sins, to anoint those who are on the bed of death, and to bury the dead. For the first time I tasted from the liturgical chalice the wine which, according to the Roman Catholic faith, I had just helped by the formula of consecration to be transubstantiated in the blood of Christ. The ordination was led by Cardinal Basilio Pompilj in the church of St. John Lateran.
Mechanically repeated prayers
Any joy I would have experienced that day was overshadowed by a sad incident I witnessed late that evening. One of my fellow students has lost his mind, because straining his attention through mechanical routine, countless insignificant restrictions, endless repetitions of prayers and formulas often unbalances the mind and can trigger a kind of religious madness called "scruple."
I remember a similar incident. In Florida, where I was a priest, I used to visit a mentally handicapped institution outside of Gainesville. The head of the ward brought me a Roman Catholic girl of about fourteen, whose mental disorder consisted in repeating agitatedly and counting the "Hail Mary" prayer.
Her mind was overwhelmed by the sickly idea that she had to say this prayer a hundred times every day, and to be sure she had said it in time, she was already a thousand years ahead. Certainly a priest had given her this issue of "Hail Mary" as a penance on the occasion of one of her confessions.
After three and a half years of working as a priest in South Africa, I was recalled to Rome to work at the Vatican. Over time, my doubts about the origins of the papacy resurfaced. The growing distrust of the fact that Roman Catholic practices are truly Christian, the intimate knowledge of the failed lives of my fellow priests and the growing loss of hope that there could be an improvement of the Christian Church under papal supremacy have led to unrest. deeper and deeper interior. From a spiritual, doctrinal, legal, and personal point of view, the Roman papacy, in its capacity as God's appointed overseer of Christendom, was increasingly crumbling within me.
From Rome I was transferred to America. This country was completely foreign to me, and I thought of escaping utter disillusionment by devoting myself entirely to the spiritual needs of the common people.
A young man sentenced to death
The feeling of failure I was experiencing can be illustrated by the following example. I once had to watch a young man sentenced to death in an electric chair in Raiford Prison in Florida. This prison was in my Gainesville parish. This young man came from a city in eastern America, was born and baptized a Roman Catholic, and had been educated in a Roman Catholic parish school. He had been trained in all Roman Catholic practices considered essential to a God-fearing life. He was convicted in Tampa of complicity in a robbery at a restaurant where the owner had been killed. I did everything I could to prepare this young man for "his last journey." I administered to him all the rituals instituted by the Roman Catholic Church and by which it is said that grace and divine power are poured into needy souls. Even as he lay dead on the electric chair after the fatal current had done its job, I anointed his forehead with oil, as is to be done for the administration of the sacrament of the anointing. However, I was aware that I could not give real comfort to this young man's sinful soul.
I had visited him in his cell during his fearful waiting week, and I had signed with him several times the formula for forgiving sins. On the last morning I was at dawn at the prison gates, carrying with me all the awkward instruments needed to celebrate the liturgy. I arranged them on a table near the double row of bars that separated me from his cell. I clothed myself in all my brilliant labors in the liturgy, and proceeded, with all the dignity permitted by the ominous atmosphere of a death row inmate, to offer the "sacrifice" of the full liturgy. The poor young man, in a feverish wait, walked back and forth behind bars and smoked cigarette after cigarette. He threw down a cigarette to receive on his tongue the host of the holy communion which I had spread out behind bars. It had no effect. The morphine injection given by the doctor ten minutes before he was put on the electric chair calmed him down somewhat. It suddenly occurred to me that the doctor's injection had brought the young man greater external relief than all my administration of the Roman Catholic sacraments, which are believed to soothe both body and soul. Then I followed him to the chair.
The electric chair
As the whole destructive power of the current passed through the young man's body, shaking him violently, keeping him stretched out and almost stuck in the air, my hand made the sign of the cross countless times, accompanied by Latin words for the remission of sins, as if I were I too could have sent a "stream" of forgiving grace through his soul. His body collapsed dead after the power went out, and I went forward with the bottle of oil in my hand. I asked the guard to remove the iron guard from the dead young man's head and anointed his forehead, wet with the sweat of death, with the oil used for the anointing by the Roman Catholic Church. Since none of his relatives were there, I asked for his body and buried him with all the Catholic ritual in the Roman Catholic part of the cemetery - though not without protest from some pious Roman Catholics in my congregation who objected to the presence of a convicted murderer among their deceased relatives. I have to remind them that Jesus Christ also died between two murderous robbers.
However, although my holy fingers had completed all the meticulous and carefully crafted rituals of the Roman Catholic sacraments, I realized that I had not been able to help the poor young man at all when it was most difficult for him. Maybe it was all my fault, because I had nothing of real value to give, everything seemed empty and hollow. However, I had to accept the praise of the Catholics that I had behaved like a good priest to this poor young convict.
This ritual was invented by Roman Catholic theologians to fit their basic teaching that salvation can be gained only "by the deeds done" by a priest. It is argued that the grace of salvation can be "poured out" into one's soul through the specially provided channels of the seven sacraments. These, in turn, act as conduits leading from the great reservoir of grace over which only the pope of Rome has a monopoly. It is characteristic of the whole system of Roman Catholic theology that man performs some magical rituals over some material things, thus giving the impression that they would have a real effect in the spiritual realm. The result of what the priest does is a matter of faith and a matter of organization and practice. But the power of the Kingdom of Heaven is quite different. The apostle Paul describes the true power of the gospel:“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, "The righteous will live by faith" (Romans 1: 16-17).
I had to walk alone on the difficult path of leaving the Church of my childhood and priesthood, without a single man to lead or understand me. Only Jesus Christ was my companion and guide. I resolutely grabbed his outstretched hand and followed Him wherever I went.
After I left Catholicism, the Lord revealed Himself to me as a personal Savior by reading God's Word. I have seen many heresies of Catholicism. From the height of my position as a priest, I had to fall to my knees and confess that I, like all other people, was a sinner in need of salvation through the Lord Jesus.
To the many conditions which the papacy has arrogantly declared to be essential to salvation, I now oppose the simple and comforting invitation of Jesus Christ in Matthew 11: 28-30: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, be burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light . "
After his conversion in 1931, Lehmann worked for many years in the "Christ's Mission" in New York, an organization through which many Roman Catholic priests were able to find truth and freedom in Jesus Christ.
(Translator: Olimpiu S. Cosma)
[Source: https://bereanbeacon.org/ro/sufletul-unui-preot/]
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