Latest / The Catholic Current / Priests Against the Chaos (Fr. John Perricone) 7/23/26

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Priests Against the Chaos (Fr. John Perricone) 7/23/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Mattheig.
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When I think back to the Apostolic Fathers, those who
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learned at the feet of the Apostles, I mean, imagine hearing the
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voice of St. John describe embracing the risen Lord.
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That would be a life-altering thrill. But to quote the poet,
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the thrill is gone, isn't it? You're right. And you know, I often think of
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The Church Is One Foundation where it talks about how the Church victorious will be
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the Church at rest. We've decided to skip ahead and become the Church at rest
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now. Praise be Jesus Christ.
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This is Father Robert McKeague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The
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Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us on the Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio station,
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and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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and charity. As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius of Loyola,
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we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment,
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and hear your voice and obey your command. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, you know, friends, in the summertime
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there's not only weddings, there are also ordinations.
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In June, I celebrated my 29th anniversary of priesthood.
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Thanks be to God. And I've been thinking a lot about priesthood,
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and my claim is that priesthood is kind of the canary in
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the coal mine. And when the priesthood seems to be
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in trouble and distress, and when priests are falling by the
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wayside, that's an indication there's something very wrong and
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our culture as well. And I think my returning guest might agree with me
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because he's written something to that effect. He's, like me, a professor
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of philosophy, a curmudgeon from New Jersey. He's a brother priest, a friend of the
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show, and a friend of mine, Father John Perricone. Welcome back to
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The Catholic Current. Always a delight, Father. Thank you for having me. Father,
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recently you attended an ordination and you preached
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at a priest's first Mass, and it was a beautiful sermon, and you wrote that
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up in Crisis Magazine. Can you summarize that for us as
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a leaping-off point for our conversation? Well, Father, I, I was intrigued
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by the, the fact of how we find out
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through, through the Holy Bible that new creations come about
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by the breathing of God. We see that in, in Genesis.
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We, we see it again in the New Testament when our Lord
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breathed on the apostles and gave them the power to forgive sins. And it
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dawned on me that this is exactly what happens at an ordination of a priest.
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That the Holy Spirit comes and breathes
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new life, new identity,
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not merely a change of names, but a new metaphysical
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identity. This goes to the deepest part of one's being. And so
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therefore, when the priest,
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after he stands up from having the hands of the successor of the
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apostles placed upon his head, the imposition of hands, he ceases
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to be who he was a second ago, and now he's a new creation.
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Now he is, uh, a father in all
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the beautiful dimensions of what a spiritual father
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is. That struck me. Um, and before
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that, of course, Father, we know that very moving part of the ordination
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ceremony when the priest lies down flat,
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prostrate on the sanctuary floor almost looking
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like a corpse, right? And, and it, it,
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it's such a dramatic symbol that now the priest
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is waiting for new life to be breathed into him so he can stand to
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become a new creation for the world and for the
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Church. And then moreover, Father, I was struck,
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as you and I are, when the priest's hands are soaked with sacred chrism,
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his palms, and then they're wrapped by an attendant in the
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linen cloth and he's taken away to have
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the, the sacred chrism washed from him.
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When he's taken away, he looks like a captive, doesn't he? Right, right.
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Now, and he is. You know that top men,
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top men decided that particular part of the rite should
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be dropped because, you know, the, the cloth that with which you are bound,
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it's a sign of obedience, a sign of captivity to Christ,
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called the, the manutergium, which is the Latin for the thing you
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cleanse your hands with. There was the beautiful beautiful custom that
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you— the priest would give that to his mother and she would be buried
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with it so she could go to the gates of heaven and say, I'm the
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mother of a priest, you know, you gotta let me in. Now, my vesting priest,
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Father Timothy Cadigan, God bless him, had the presence of mind to
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rescue the cloth with which I cleaned my hands,
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and I was able to present that to my mother after my ordination on her
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birthday. And my father said, well, you know, I'm going to go with you to
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heaven with your mother and say I'm with her. And so, that was
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an old custom that was, I think, needs to be restored.
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But during the Litany of Saints, I remember lying face
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down on the marble and I hear, bless these chosen ones,
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bless these chosen ones and make them holy,
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bless these chosen ones, make them holy and take
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them into your service. And then I thought, oh my gosh, they're talking about
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me. I was dumbstruck by
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that. Why would God do that to himself? And then when it was my turn
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to come up and walk forward to the
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ordaining prelate, I just had that line from St. Paul,
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no longer I, but Christ. No longer
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I, but Christ. And Father, candidly, when I hear and read
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a lot of the talk about we really need to ordain everybody
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who wants to be ordained regardless, I hear
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rather the language of ambition for executive
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power and nothing about being a captive
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and a sacrificial victim. Have you noticed that too? Oh sure,
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they want to reduce the priesthood to some kind
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of unilateral bookkeeper in a
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law firm or at a— or an attendant at
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a shopping mall. That is about— that is about it. Or in the past,
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um, 50 years, the priest becomes a therapeutic
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masseuse, or he becomes the, you know,
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the political agitator for justice in,
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in the world. And this flattens, if not completely
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kills, the whole beauty and splendor
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of his profile with that indelible mark
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of, of holy orders. And as we both know, this is going to have ripple
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effect upon society, because as the church goes, so culture
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goes. And I would say, as the priest goes,
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so does civilization go. There's that wonderful
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line, Father, I mentioned in my article, Saint John Mary Vianney. You might remember it.
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Um, when the priest is a saint, the people will be holy. When the priest
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is merely good, the people will be bad. When the priest is bad,
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the people become beasts, right?
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Um, we're surrounded, are we not, today, Father,
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by a civilization of beasts, a philosophy
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that is beastly? Yes, unfortunately, that beastliness
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has infiltrated the Catholic Church.
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Right. And so, and by beastly, we really mean subhuman.
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And we know because of the Incarnation that what is
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anti-human is in fact Antichrist. So,
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you know, I read recently, imagine you had the same
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misfortune, one of the study documents from the Synod on Synodality
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about priestly formation. And Christ is
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never, never referred to as priest,
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prophet, and king. He's referred only as head servant
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and shepherd. And also, it seems the primary
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purpose of priestly formation is to have the future
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priest learn how to call meeting after proving his bona fides
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by willing to be talked at by angry women.
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That's how some friends of mine have summarized their experience of
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that document. Have you seen glimmerings of that as well?
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Well, Father, I have to admit that I take seriously Mother Church's
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injunction that we avoid occasions of sin. So I don't
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read those documents because given my Italian
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temperament, I might do things that are untoward.
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So, but I take— I have read about those documents
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and that doesn't surprise me, Father, because that language has been present
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since the time I began fighting these wars in the 1970s in, in,
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in, in the seminary. Um, I recognize that,
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and I fully understand that new vocabulary
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and that new identity. And it devastated
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the church. It— the church looks like
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now the day after Hiroshima, and it is because of that
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kind of philosophy and theology infiltrating the church.
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I thought under the pontificates of Benedict and John Paul II,
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that was beginning to, to be, to be rolled back.
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And, and it was. And then we know the rest of the story,
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right? So it's all, it's all returning,
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like that old movie They're Here Again.
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It's, you know, that's what it's like. And it just
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sends chills up and down my— I we fought this battle, but we're fighting
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again. Well, no, no, no, here we are. And really,
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Father, we have to consider if your primary function as
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a priest is, as one pastor told me, to call the
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meeting, put on the coffee, and get out of the way, why would you submit
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yourself to an intensive period of education and formation?
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And why would you take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience
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if you just want to call meetings? You know, be a school board member.
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And so people are scratching their heads about why there aren't vocations.
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I just read some alarming statistics about ordination in France, Father. There are several
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dioceses that haven't had any ordinations in 15
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years. One diocese might have a— have an ordination
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here and there. We're not allowed to talk about it. We're not allowed to
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talk about the why of it or how we got here. And whenever someone has
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a brilliant that's gonna fix it with this one-word trick,
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or that we're gonna have a new Pentecost even though we haven't finished the payments
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on the old new Pentecost. I want to say, look, unless and
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until you can define how we got here, I don't
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want to hear your solution to how we get out of the ditch because I
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don't trust you. I think that's where we are right now. Friends,
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when we come back, we're gonna continue our conversation with Father John Perricone. We are
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talking about Priests Against the Chaos. Remember, our rallying cry
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My returning guest today is my good friend Father John Perricone. We're talking
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about Priests Against the Chaos. Father, we're both professors of philosophy.
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Let's be philosophy nerds for a bit here.
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Uh, in the beginning was the Word through whom all
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things were made. The eternal Word of the Father,
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the Word made flesh, Son of God and Son of Mary, was the
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only begotten Son of God, the second person of the Trinity.
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He is the Logos, from which we get words like
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logic. And the Greek word arche means
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order, structure, fitting a form
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to its purpose. Hieros arche,
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holy order, hierarchy— these
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are all things that are woven together.
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And when you reject the word of the Father.
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You don't have a clear playing field.
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You don't have a blank canvas on which we can thrust
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our Nietzschean will, but rather we
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have chaos, which is the opposite
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of order. We have the playground of Leviathan.
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Uh, Belloc said, Christ or chaos. Is it
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not the case that the disorder disruption we see in priesthood
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is indicative, indicative of an anti-logos,
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anti-rational, anti-Christ culture. Very well
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expressed, Father. Reminds me of Chesterton's remark when
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he said, when you take away the supernatural and what you
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have is not the natural but the unnatural,
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right? And we see the unnatural all around us.
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We're suffocated by it. It is— you're right, only our
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Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, the Father, through him all things
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were made. The magnificent order of the universe proceeding
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from the Son, from the Father.
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And that allows us to understand that truth
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is ordered, it's hierarchical,
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and the truth comes from the Father. And when we understand the truth We
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are— our minds open up to a panorama of
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ordered beauty, at which— and when we embrace
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Christ, the civilization happens and all the glories of
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the civilization of Europe, with all its
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artistic treasures, with its architecture, with its literature.
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All of it is just overwhelmingly stunning because
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it proceeds from the Logos. That Word made flesh.
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Today, on the old calendar, the Feast of St. Bonaventure.
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And those medieval doctors recognized that there was not anything
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in the universe that did not remind them of the Trinity.
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Everything somehow was glistening with heaven.
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And Father, what does that bring about? But when you have the truth,
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then you have joy. And when you have joy, you have peace.
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Because how does Augustine define peace as it is a result—
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the, uh, it is the result of order, the tranquility
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of order. Yes, of order. And order brings— and where does that
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order come from? It can only come from the Logos.
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So we have the tranquility, we have peace in ourselves
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and in society when our Lord Jesus Christ is deeply
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embedded in that society through the working of the Church and
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the working of the Church through her priests, right? Then no happiness.
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Right. Father, I want to draw an analogy and get your take on,
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you know, St. Irenaeus said, the glory of God is a man fully alive.
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Is it fair to say that Christendom represents
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a civilization fully alive,
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and therefore glorifying God? Yes, there were sinners,
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always, that's inevitable. Yes, there were flaws in the
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people who lived Christendom. But what they were living itself was
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indicative of what happens when a civilization
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is immersed in the Gospel and makes Christ
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the primary referent always and everywhere. It produces,
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you know, stupendous art in every form.
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It produces holiness, again, produces joy,
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vocations, etc., etc. There was a sense of
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purpose And now we have
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what? We've got chaos, we've got randomness,
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we've got people who claim not only were they born in the
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wrong body, they were born in the wrong species. Marriage is
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being redefined.
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Why is it so hard to convince people that we're in trouble? Well,
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I guess it's that old that old vice of
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pride, when you are fastened upon the fact that what
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is in your own head makes all the difference in the world,
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becomes— it becomes your world. There's a kind of addiction that falls
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upon that, isn't there, Father? That you only— that you can
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see. And that's the reason why the damned in hell have
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to remain there. These people that talk about the apocatastasis of,
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of Origen, and some people today who want to revive that
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don't recognize that the damned do not want to be saved,
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that even if Christ would offer them that, because they are so locked
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into their own pride that they would rather remain in hell for
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eternity than turning around, even with the offer of Christ.
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And that is being reflected in a society that rejects Christ.
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I would be rather living in— and didn't see us— who
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make that comment in one of his essays, uh, Man Today,
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and in the categories of modern thought. He said it would be easier
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to— for the— it was easier for the church to convert Zoroastrians
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and members of the Roman Empire and pagans of ancient Greece
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than it is to convert men of the 20th century.
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Why? Because at least the ancient man, because he still
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referenced truth, was open to the truth and could be convinced
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to change. But when you have the cadavers who call
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themselves human beings roaming about the streets of our world today,
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so self-enclosed in their own world, it's hard to penetrate
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that. Um, the only thing that will do that would be prayer and penance,
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because our Lord told us that there are certain demons that cannot be cast out
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except by prayer and penance, right? We, we are living a kind of
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9th circle of hell, Father. This is what happens. These are the consequences
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of of rejecting the Logos. Rejecting truth introduces
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chaos, right? And, and I want to be clear,
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we have to absolutely insist, although it's not what
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the cool kids are doing these days, Christ is not one voice
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among many. Christ is not
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one option. And the Church is not a mere
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dialogue partner. You know, Father,
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I'm sure you and I both cringe when senior Catholic cadres of
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people who should really know better club get together and say, well, you know,
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no one has monopoly on truth. Well, first of all, that's a meaningless statement.
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But secondly, Christ himself is
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truth personified. He is the way,
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the truth, and the life. He's the eternal Logos of the Father.
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And I don't understand how a man in
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holy orders can lose sight of it. Now look, Father, make no
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mistake, I'm, I'm a sinner. I'm an unworthy vessel. I told my mentor
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years ago I wouldn't have chosen me and I wouldn't have put up with me.
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And God has chosen to do both. And I identify with John Vianney,
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who apparently on his deathbed wept bitter tears that he himself
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had lived such a half-hearted life in the service of his high vocation.
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So I'm counting on a lot of Carmelites to get me into
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and out of purgatory. Nonetheless, I don't
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understand how it's possible that someone
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in holy orders wants to diminish
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the role of Christ in the world and his saving
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work in the world. What do you have to believe in
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order to allow that happen in your heart? These men are cutting their own
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throats. But then again, they have these prelates,
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these men in holy orders have forgotten what their vocation is
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to the way, the truth, and the life. It would be like claiming that you
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are an English teacher, But from the first day in class,
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telling your class that you do not have to know the alphabet—
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there is such an absurdity there. You can't have one without
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the other. Well, this is what these senior prelates now in greater numbers
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are telling the world and telling members of the Church, that in order to
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be religious, you don't have to have Christ
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because there are many different paths open to you. That is,
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uh, that is religious suicide.
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And no wonder the churches are empty, Father. No wonder seminaries
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are empty. And, and that's why we have wanderers.
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And, and, and yet there are some who are blind to that.
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Um, someone, uh, 2 months ago I wrote an article, a member
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of a religious order at least 400 years old, Father,
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uh, you might know it, um, one of its members was absolutely bemoaning
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the fact of Easter time seeing an increase of,
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of, um, baptisms, uh, of course many of
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them having taken place at traditional chapels, and if not there,
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at churches where the Mass is being said as it should
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be said and, and the catechism is being taught. And they're experiencing rises
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in converts to the Catholic faith. This author bemoaned
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that and said, isn't it a pity that all these people are coming
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into a church that's in the wrong place.
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Now, for a priest to say that,
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this is theological Harry Caray, right? Well,
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it's putting ideology above Christ.
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This is where— and C.S. Lewis warned about this in the Screwtape
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Letters, you know, Christianity and, you know, Christianity and the present
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crisis, Christianity and spelling So our Lord and Savior Jesus
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Christ is no longer Christ the King, but he's our mascot
23:32
for our pet cause. So on this view,
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not only do I apply a litmus test to the world that, you know,
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you support me in my particular proclivity and enthusiasm
23:43
of the moment, but God is God only to
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the degree that he sees the wisdom of my
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predilections, my preference, my ideology, and to the
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degree that God is willing to bless what I have committed
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to a priori, only to that degree is he God. And the
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idea that you are summoned,
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you know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him
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to come and die. Well, of course, die to the rebellious
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self, die to fallen flesh. And then once you
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become liberated and Christ says, I want
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you to join me in liberating
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others, that's when you can leave it all behind,
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shake the dust from your sandals, and commit yourself absolutely
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to Christ the King beneath the banner of his cross.
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And that's worth giving your life for. Over and
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over again. And if I'm just the caller of meetings
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and making sure that every voice gets to be heard before
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we vote on dogma, that's not worth the
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sacrifice of a lifetime. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart,
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host here every day of The Catholic Current. After the broadcast today,
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go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audios,
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podcasts, wherever you can find audio. You can find us, follow us
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Everything you need to take, take us to your family and friends who give to
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We cannot do it without you. Let's do this very good work together.
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And please, let's work together to strive mightily to be so
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much more than merely rational. Elephant. Be back in just
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Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully,
26:46
and that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
26:50
Support us please at thestationofthecross.com. My returning
26:54
guest today is Father John Perricone. We're talking about Priests Against
26:58
the Chaos. Father, you know, we have— we're lamenting in the last
27:02
segment the dearth of priestly vocations. I would say this:
27:06
it's not that Christ has stopped calling men to
27:11
priesthood. Christ loves his Church so much that
27:15
he wants to be present to his people and continue
27:19
his priestly ministry among his people in
27:23
an incarnate way through the body and soul of his ordained
27:27
priest. That doesn't change,
27:31
but what has changed? Well, what has changed is that
27:35
we are forgetting that our Lord works through normal channels,
27:39
and that same point is gratia perfectit naturam— grace
27:43
builds upon nature, the world. Now what about if the world that
27:48
a Catholic enters, the Catholic world, has been completely
27:53
divested, uh, rinsed clean of
27:57
all the channels through which our Lord's voice can be
28:01
heard and can be heard in— it has been heard in the past,
28:05
principally through the Church. You're right, our Lord said, if I be lifted
28:09
up, I will draw all men to myself. And he is drawing young men to
28:13
give up their lives in a perfect oblation. But are they
28:17
able to hear his voice? Sometimes I
28:21
sadly have to say that in the past 50 years in
28:25
the Church itself, there have been placed obstacles to
28:29
young men hearing that voice. I think the principal way—
28:33
of course, God's grace can work in many, many ways that
28:38
are often strange to us— but the normal way
28:41
he works is through the symbols that
28:45
he has given his Holy Catholic Church. Um, in one of the greatest
28:48
acts that draw men to, to be able to listen to
28:53
the voice of Christ is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And when
28:57
it is celebrated with proper majesty and grandeur
29:02
and carefulness, a young man's
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heart catches fire. And that has
29:09
always been the case for you, for me. Uh, I served, grew up
29:14
serving the, the ancient Mass, uh, and why did
29:18
so many of the young boys in my grammar school class
29:22
want to become priests?
29:25
Because our Lord's voice was being heard through the
29:29
vehicle of the Mass. He was setting their souls
29:33
on fire. And though many of them didn't endure in that, at least they
29:36
were able to hear that first voice. We were able to hear that first voice
29:41
in the teaching of the catechism and the great truth that you're giving,
29:45
giving us. But when that's muffled, Father,
29:48
when that somehow has been deliberately hidden, when,
29:52
right, um, when the majesty is taken away, or all you have
29:57
is a pedestrian recreation of their sports bars
30:00
when they go to church, well, how are they going to hear our Lord saying,
30:04
and if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself? They're going
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to say, if I want a great sports bar, I'll go
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to my, my neighborhood sports bar. I don't need
30:15
this place that is mimicking a sports bar or mimicking
30:19
entertainment, or for that matter, the man who's conducting it,
30:23
the ringleader. Yes, our Lord is calling young men, and,
30:26
and we see that, don't we, Father, when in this day and age when young
30:30
men do have the grace to be able to
30:34
find a church where Mass is celebrated with the awe that
30:38
it deserves. Now, I and you see young men respond.
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I see that every week in the places where I say Mass.
30:46
There's something that young men find so tremendously
30:51
enthralling and exciting, right? Even though
30:55
they recognize from you and I, they recognize that this means giving up
30:58
everything, you know. Yes, we will. Yes, we will.
31:02
We want to. Because God is like
31:05
this ravenous love. We want to give everything to
31:09
him because he's given everything to us.
31:12
Saint Columbanus would say to his, his priests in, in the
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5th century when he was building monasteries,
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that he would say, you are God's fire. Wow. And you and
31:22
I, Father, are God's fire. And when young men see a,
31:27
a, a priest being, giving, breathing fire.
31:31
They, they want a part of that, right? See, when I grew up,
31:35
uh, my— the superstars were priests. We didn't have— we watched
31:40
cartoons and all that, but we know these supermen were priests,
31:43
these men who walked in cassocks and, and mingled
31:47
with us and were calling us to forget our, our stupidity
31:52
and our selfishness and self-absorption,
31:57
calling us to something greater because we saw men who had
32:00
given themselves to something that was greater than themselves, our Lord
32:04
Christ crucified. And that ignited the hearts of young men.
32:09
Of course, when we have that, Father, we will see our
32:12
seminaries exploding. And in places that
32:16
do offer men that, we see that they have no dearth
32:19
of vocations, 2 points of contrast.
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On the one hand, I remember back in high school reading a spiritual journal.
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I forget the author, but, uh, and who wrote it
32:31
was a young priest. And he said, Lord, let me live my life such
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that people will ask, if this be the servant,
32:39
what be the master? So the priest is
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always meant to be lost in a certain
32:47
sense, to, to point past himself.
32:50
And there, in God's providence, there's also an identity between
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messenger and message. A friend of mine worked at a Catholic high school,
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and the diocesan vocation director came, and he was a
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singularly unpleasant person to deal with.
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He was unkempt, his clerical shirt was dirty, he chain-smoked,
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he was rude, he was vulgar. And he said to her, you know,
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what do you need from me to get more vocations out of this high school?
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And she answered, credible and attractive witnesses and
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role models. So there we are.
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So if we are casual or flippant about
33:29
our vocation, you know, we're just like everybody else except we work
33:32
on weekends, that's not going to be very
33:37
compelling. But I also think we have to talk about another elephant
33:41
in the room. I used to joke with my students. I said, I wasn't found
33:45
in an envelope by the side of the road by Father Fessio, an envelope labeled
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Jesuit inside, add water and stir, and I emerged with
33:53
bespectacled and with a gray beard. I came from a
33:57
family, and there was a time when families
34:01
promoted vocations. In fact, when I first started
34:05
doing seminary formation, you had to ask a candidate
34:09
from 79 different angles. Is anybody forcing you to do this?
34:13
Because every, every Catholic family wanted a priest. But if you've
34:17
got only 1 or 2 kids, then by golly, you want your grandchildren.
34:22
So it's somebody else's kid who has to be the
34:26
priest. Have you seen this too? Yes, I remember growing up, Father,
34:29
and I'm older than you, so you might not have seen this, but oftentimes
34:34
Catholic families would give 1, 2, sometimes 3 priests
34:38
and even nuns to the church because
34:41
of exactly what you said. They— the, the family
34:45
was the womb of the church. Um,
34:48
Saint John Chrysostom calls it the domestic church.
34:52
And when a young man sees mom and dad being
34:55
generous and having of all the children that it pleased
35:00
him for them to have, and when they see that
35:03
oblation and they see happily,
35:06
and they see mom and dad praying the rosary, now something
35:10
happens to them. It changes them. And, and they— so
35:14
the— that kind of family, it gives them their children
35:18
to the church. Because a child, a young man, sees that nothing is more
35:22
important than glorifying God. I've seen it in my mom and, and, and the
35:27
sacrifices they made. And there's something electric about that.
35:31
It just is communicated to the young men. So that, it, that's absolutely true,
35:34
Father. It is the family. And unfortunately, the families
35:39
have been swallowed up by the heathenism of the, of the culture.
35:42
And how many families have simply accepted the
35:46
fact that, oh, now, you know, Johnny or Susan is, they're going
35:49
to live with each other, but that's how things are today, they say,
35:54
and, and nothing further about it. How can our
35:58
Lord's voice? How can the cry of the Holy Spirit be heard through that?
36:01
Right, right. Now, I think we, you know,
36:06
God can work miracles, but ordinarily, we don't presume
36:09
on God's grace, and we say that grace builds on nature.
36:14
And if you want to plant a garden, it's good to get rid of the
36:17
weeds, and it's good to get rid of the rocks, and it's
36:20
good to protect against the crows. And so on. So let's,
36:24
let's shift a little bit. There might be
36:28
some young men listening now, and how do we help
36:32
them to open their eyes, their ears, and their hearts?
36:36
What should they stop doing and what should they be doing? Well, they should
36:40
stop thinking only about themselves and their own indulgences
36:45
and their own pleasures. They have to stop saying
36:48
They have to stop saying yes to every fancy that
36:52
comes their way in the course of an ordinary day. That means sacrifice.
36:56
Someone has to tell them about sacrifice. They can't be number
37:00
one in the world. Somehow they have to understand. And then with
37:04
that understanding, they should begin to pray.
37:08
Go to the Mother of God. Learn how to say the rosary. Look online
37:12
on how to say it and say it every day. It might be difficult.
37:16
It cuts into your, your, your time, at least the time as you formally
37:21
organized it, only about yourself and your pleasures. But if you say
37:24
the rosary, Our Lady will begin to break down all the
37:28
barriers that you have carefully constructed in your life, and then
37:32
she will bring you to other things such as the Mass.
37:36
And the next thing, try to find a Mass that's said according
37:40
to the mind of the church, right? And a Mass where you see the priest
37:45
not wanting to showcase himself,
37:49
but a priest through his reverence who wants to only reflect Christ,
37:53
right? I think when you do— when he does those things, Father, he will be
37:56
led to other things. He will be led to understand what our Lord
38:00
means by prayer and fasting and the giving
38:03
up of oneself. And then he might want to begin
38:07
been diving into the magnificent
38:12
legacy of Mother Church's teaching as it has been developed by 2,000
38:16
years of saints and doctors of the church, right? Uh, he'll be dazzled
38:20
by that. Yes. I also— I, I think, yeah, I have a
38:24
young man who came to me, and, and again, he had never learned the
38:28
catechism. He came from nothing. For some reason, he got his hands on Saint Irenaeus,
38:32
Father. Oh, and was absolutely enthralled.
38:36
Sure. Oh God, no, no, the treasures are there waiting
38:41
to be found. And if the young men listening along, one of— you got
38:45
to get your house in order, and that means regular sacramental
38:49
confession is absolutely indispensable.
38:53
Every 2 weeks without fail, you need to go to confession. There are some very
38:58
good examinations of conscience online. And the closer you draw to Christ,
39:02
the more aware you're going to become of how far
39:06
you fall short of him. And you say,
39:10
I— if I'm considering the possibility that he may be calling
39:13
me to be his instrument and his vessel, then I have to get my house
39:17
in order, and I have to put aside everything
39:21
that is unworthy of me.
39:25
Whatever our Lord calls you to you're a lot more likely
39:30
to hear him if you're habitually living in a state
39:33
of grace and you're actively striving against the
39:38
seeds of sin that the world, the flesh, and the devil want to plant
39:42
in you every single day. We've got to
39:45
fight for our own souls, and then Christ will enable us to
39:49
fight for the souls of others. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart.
39:52
Your host every day of The Catholic Current. Stay with us for the rest of
39:55
the hour. Father Perricone and I are going to give some advice, especially for
40:00
supporting priests, in particular struggling priests. Be part of the conversation.
40:04
Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
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That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic Current,
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and you can influence a conversation. You can contact us at thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
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We want to hear from you, especially if you've been thinking about a vocation,
40:22
if you've been to the seminary, or if you've left. If you're a priest,
40:25
how happy have you been? Let's have a conversation
40:29
together. Be back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
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41:12
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41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. So listen to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:30
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the
41:34
fullness of truth with Clarity and Charity. My returning guest today is Father
41:38
John Perricone. We're talking about Priests Against the Chaos.
41:42
Father, I want to address the brother— our brother priests in
41:45
the audience. I do hear from them, not only in the United States,
41:49
but around the world. And there are men who are really heroic,
41:53
and there are men who have stumbled. There are men who are in
41:56
danger, and nearly all of them are struggling.
42:01
And I think they need a word of encouragement.
42:05
How can we, how can we build up our brother priests who feel
42:09
the weight of the cross biting into their shoulder right now? I think
42:12
first of all, they have to have— find other priests, mens nostra,
42:17
of their own mind. It's important that they are together with other priests
42:21
who are— who understand their very high vocation,
42:25
that they could talk about that with, and they could do pleasant
42:29
things with. That's very important. Um, Our Lord brought together
42:34
12 friends, apostles, and in those 3
42:38
years of public life, he was always with them. We ought not to think we
42:41
should not do the same thing. We have to have a circle of close friends.
42:45
Once we have that, then they can encourage each other. As you mentioned
42:49
in the last segment, so important to get into confession frequently,
42:53
at least every month, having a good examination
42:56
of conscience, Father. They just can't leave their confessions to be
43:00
superficial. So they have to urge each other to want to
43:04
be saints. And that could only come from an examination of conscience
43:08
that allows us to dig deeply, deeply into
43:13
what is necessary for me to become virtuous,
43:16
not merely virtuous, heroically virtuous.
43:20
And then their prayer, when they pray, they have to
43:24
pray the Divine Office, no matter how many obligations happen in the course
43:29
of a day, and that is their obligation. It's pain of sin, and it
43:32
will bring them closer to our Lord. I think they also,
43:36
Father, in this busy— and they're very busy today when there's so few
43:39
good priests to do so much more work— they have to
43:43
have an horarium. They have to live the virgin order in
43:46
a particular day so they know these are the many obligations I have
43:50
today, but I can't fall over into activism.
43:54
Read The Soul of the Apostle by Chautauqua, and where they
43:57
recognize— oh, excellent book. Yeah, yeah, right. The only way
44:02
that I'm going to become a worthy instrument of our Lord to others, as I
44:05
have to be, is if first I'm nurturing
44:09
the fire of sanctifying grace in, in me, then I can give it to others.
44:13
I cannot fall into the, the falsehood
44:17
that even all this very good virtuous
44:21
activity can never take the place of our intimacy
44:25
with God. And then don't you agree, Father, that I think they
44:28
have to involve themselves in the study of the faith every day?
44:32
Oh gosh, of course. They have to start
44:35
reading St. Thomas Aquinas. And Father, if they're not, if they're afraid of going to
44:39
Thomas directly, let them begin with someone like Father Walter Farrell, that wonderful
44:43
4-volume work, the Companion to the Summa, and begin
44:47
to pick at the great treasury that the wealth
44:51
of the Church has given us. Because as the mind goes, so the person
44:55
goes, and they have to nourish their mind. They might
44:59
want to read Father Settola's On the Intellectual
45:02
Life. Oh, I like that. Anybody doesn't— is
45:06
not stirred by that, their soul
45:10
is turning to dust. I, I also, I said, you know, um, when I was
45:13
working in diocesan seminaries, I, I said, look,
45:16
you guys have to form friendships within the presbyterate
45:21
because you're, you're going to be the ones to, to lean on,
45:25
on each other, uh, and you're going to need someone who
45:29
can go up to you and say, hey, you look like you need help,
45:32
are you okay? I think it would be well for families
45:36
to at least say, I don't know, something crazy like thank you every now and
45:40
again, you know, maybe invite Father for dinner, remember his birthday,
45:44
and so on. So they're very practical things, uh, that way.
45:48
And I, I believe that one of, one of the
45:51
joys of priesthood for me has been preaching.
45:55
Uh, it's something that I take very, very seriously.
45:59
And Father, I'll, I'll be honest with you, I'm not the kind of person who
46:03
can sit in the chapel for hours and just sigh.
46:07
I, I don't have the temperament for that. But knowing that I
46:10
have to preach tomorrow and the next day and the next day
46:14
always gets me praying. So what I'll recommend for my brother priests,
46:18
there is something by Aquinas called the Catena Aurea, the, the Golden
46:22
Chain, and he goes through every single line
46:27
of the Gospel and has every patristic
46:30
commentary on that verse of the Gospel
46:34
that Aquinas is aware of. And so every day I'm praying
46:39
the Gospel with Augustine and Irenaeus and
46:42
Chrysostom and, and the Venerable Bede. It's affected
46:46
my preaching, it's affected my prayer, it's affected my,
46:49
my writing. And for my brother priests,
46:52
if you're, if you're in trouble, if you've stumbled,
46:56
if you've fallen, go to confession, do your penance.
47:00
Amend your life. And remember, the greatest lie from the pit
47:04
of hell is from Satan, who tells us that what defines us is our
47:08
sin, and what is most important about us is the sin
47:11
we're most ashamed of. When in fact, what's most important about
47:15
us is our baptism and the fact that by God's grace and ordination,
47:19
we are configured to Christ. You are needed
47:23
as a brother priest, and you are
47:28
are worth fighting for. Father, let's go bold in the last 2 minutes here we
47:31
have together. Offer some unsolicited advice to bishops
47:36
for the care and feeding of their priests. Well,
47:40
become their father, first of all.
47:44
Help them to live their high vocation.
47:49
Understand the difficulties that they are experiencing.
47:53
And maybe, maybe, Father, begin to tell them that in spite
47:58
of all the static they're hearing from even
48:02
the highest places, that the only thing that really makes a difference
48:05
is immersing themselves in the teaching of the Church.
48:09
Your suggestion of the Catena Aurea is absolutely wonderful,
48:13
and, and to move forward with that, and that's the way they're going to
48:17
be good shepherds. Right, right. I, I think that, you know,
48:20
every man at every age and every stage of development
48:24
needs a spiritual father, uh,
48:27
needs someone that he can look to for guidance and reassurance.
48:32
And by God, you know, a man needs someone,
48:36
a comrade of arms, preferably superior, who at least
48:40
once in a great while says, I'm proud of you. You're doing a good job.
48:45
I'm glad you're here. You're one of us. You belong
48:49
here with us. That reaches a man's soul very,
48:53
very deeply. And so brother priests need to say that
48:57
to each other, and bishops need to say that to their priests
49:01
as well. And lay people, every now and again, just please say thank you to
49:05
Father. He doesn't have to be Fulton Sheen to deserve
49:09
thanks. He's, he's certainly carrying a cross that many people don't.
49:12
See. He's got an awful lot on his plate,
49:16
and we live in a culture that is inimical to priesthood.
49:19
So say thank you from him that he showed up today.
49:23
Uh, Father John Perricone, thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your testimony.
49:27
Thank you for your priestly fraternity, and God bless your very good work.
49:31
And I do look forward to our next conversation. Please, God, let it be soon.
49:35
Thank you, Father. I thank you for all the same things. You're very kind.
49:38
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart, your host here every day, The Catholic Current. You want
49:42
to join us tomorrow? You know what that is for Friday, The Catholic Current.
49:46
Let's talk about this, you and me. We walk through a complex issue
49:50
together. A heads up, I've started a series called Novel Prophecies,
49:54
and I'm going to be reading some Catholic apocalyptic and dystopian literature
49:58
and some other books and say that these books, some of which are decades
50:02
old, have foreseen our times. God is
50:06
providing for us through his wisdom available to us.
50:10
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
50:13
get our resources list, download our audio podcast. Wherever you can find audio,
50:17
you can find us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star
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the whole world. Let's conspire, friends. Let's conspire to be so
50:32
much more than just merely relevant. Through the intercession of
50:36
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
50:40
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.