Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Jude 1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Jude 1:4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed [just as if they were sneaking in by a side door]. They are ungodly persons whose condemnation was predicted long ago, for they distort the grace of our God into decadence and immoral freedom [viewing it as an opportunity to do whatever they want], and deny and disown our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. |
Subject: Scandal of the Catholic Priesthood |
Bible Note: Henry the VIII was no paragon of virtue. He destroyed these places. "And the fall of the monasteries," quote, "...was attributed to the monstrous lives of the monks, the friars and nuns." Henry Banford Parks has written a history of Mexico. And in that history he writes, quote: "Clerical concubinage is the rule rather than the exception, and friars openly roamed the streets of cities with women on their arms. Many of the priests were ignorant and tyrannical, whose chief interest in their parishioners was the exaction of marriage, baptism and funeral fees, and who were apt to abuse the confessional." I mean it's a terrible thing. There's a lot of interesting things about the nuns. I used to always wonder: Why would anybody do that, right? Why would anybody do that? And in my reading, I have discovered that the confessional is the recruiting booth for the convents. When a woman goes into a convent, she renounces family. She's basically told that she has to hate her parents and her family. It's a hard disconnect for a woman, harder than a man. She has to slaughter all maternal instincts, which are God-given. She has to put to death the idea of being cared for by a man, which is God-given, to enter this stoic environment. She is given a wedding ring because she's marrying whom? Jesus. She has to wear this bizarre, medieval garb consisting of a long, black dress, symbol of grief. That's what it is, the symbol of death. And then some grotesque headpiece, which is no good in the summer or the winter or the wind. It's so -- but, you know, they recruit them in the confessional. They take advantage of particularly the women who are coming off of a shattered relationship, and they're deeply wounded. And they get to know them because in a parish church, the same people keep coming back. And they look for a sensitive soul who comes often to confession, comes often to mass, who's gone through some difficulty. And at that point, it's really a matter of preying on that person in a time of weakness, a time of pain and suffering, to make this bizarre commitment. Emmet MacLaughlin writes: "The nun is one of the most remarkable products of the Roman Catholic church. She's an absolute slave, one whose willingness to offer her life should fill communist leaders with jealousy; one from whom the hierarchy conceals her slavery by the wedding ring on her finger; one who believes that in shining the Bishop's shoes, waiting on his table or scrubbing the floor, she is gathering treasure in heaven. She is the one who makes possible the church's hundreds of hospitals, the one who teaches in parochial schools and orphanages and so forth. She is also a woman with all the desires, instincts, loyalties and hatreds of which a woman is capable. Subservient to her man, through her indoctrination of her wedding to Christ, often catty and gossipy towards sister nuns and hospital nurses, maternal in her hoverings over priests and children, matriarchal in her petty policies for the control of her hospital and convent," goes on and on. "Self-annihilating all normal desires." And the position of the cloistered nuns, there's a -- there's really a strange group. Do you know there are nuns who take a vow of silence and spend their entire life, never speak? Never say a word. And they think that somehow they're going to get salvation from that. Boettner says: "In the set-up of the Roman Catholic church, it is the confessional box that feeds the nunneries. The groundwork is done on the Catholic girl in the parochial school, where the nun is made an object of holy glamour, a replica of the virgin Mary. The institution of the confessional makes it easy for the priest to find the girls they want, and naturally try to select the choice ones. "Ordinarily, confessions begin at the age of seven. Through this means, the priest comes to know the very heart and soul of those who confess, which to them would be desirable in the service of the church, and which can be persuaded and which can not. It's easy for a trained priest to seize a passing fancy and blow it into a full-scale vocation. "Once a victim has been chosen, pressure is applied directly and indirectly until the battle is won. Appeals are made to the girl's Christian sense of duty. The girl's natural reluctance to enter in such a life is pictured as the evil influence of the world and the devil." |