I don’t know about you but I’ve just about had enough of all this talk about priests and sexual abuse. I think I reached the peak today as I was driving home and heard on the radio about an organization called SNAP – Support Network of those Abused by Priests! The representative being interviewed was lobbying for an audience with the Pope on his next visit to Canada. SNAP hopes to impress on the pontiff the seriousness of the emotional upset suffered by its members over the past years. They expect that this will cause the Pope to effect a change to some esoteric church policy.
SNAP out of it folks! Let’s take a quick look at the facts. We are talking about an organization here that over the past few centuries has openly participated in blatant ungodly and unbiblical rituals at the expense of millions. In case you can’t think of any here are a few of their impious practices:
- Mary worship
- Prayers offered to dead saints
- Confession of sins to a man
- Forced celibacy
- Transubstantiation (belief that Communion wafers actually become the body of Christ)
- Preaching of sin and condemnation
- Pagan origin of the Papal office
- Worshipping of relics
- Selling of indulgences to spare followers from something called purgatory
- Incorporation of pagan festivals into church practices
- Infallibility of the Papal office
and the list goes on and on … In consideration of the magnitude of their erroneous practices, do you really think any church policy could ever impact their lately brought to light indiscretions? (I say lately brought to light for certainly they’ve been in vogue for as long as the church has stood). Quite assuredly, it is church policy that has been the source of all this ungodliness in the first place.
The solution to this difficult problem is quite simple and yet insurmountable at the same time. I say simple because it’s obvious. I say insurmountable because centuries of dust-laden church tradition and man-made doctrines make for an uneasy road. So, what’s the simple answer? Let me quote you a favorite Author of mine,
Malachi 3:7
“…Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts…”
No man-ordained policy or law could ever do what God designed the Scriptures to do. Laws of man are made for the lawless and they cannot effect a change of heart. Jesus Christ said,
Matthew 23:25, 26
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.”
Once the inside is changed, the outside takes care of itself. If this church does not return to God and His Word, there can be no effective solution. They have survived for centuries with an open contempt for the very clear teachings of the Bible – a book that supposedly figured in their ignoble history. In all the discussions made public, there has not been a single suggestion to go back to the truth of the Word of God. On the other hand, I’ve heard endless rhetoric about church policy.
Why the immoral behavior, you ask? Simple. God never asks His people to abstain from marriage. In fact He never even asks them to be priests. Put away the idolatrous practices and get back to the simple truth of the Scriptures. That is the one and only lasting solution. Anything else will prove to be a Band-Aid on an already festering wound.