*The Devil Hates Priests



St. John Chrysostom, I am told, said that the floor of hell is carpeted with the skulls of priests. I have never located the source. 

Nonetheless, when we hear our Lord’s words about millstones and those who deserve them, and we hear his words about “to whom much is given” et cetera, it seems that some—no, a great deal—of trembling is in order. Priests, especially, should be terrified by these admonitions. The opportunities for either spectacular glory (not the world’s kind) or spectacular peril (also not the world’s kind) confront, each and every day, every single ordained man of the Catholic Church. A good sign that a priest grasps the reality of his responsibility and the price of failure is that he makes a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament each day.

And the Catholic laity must, must, must pray for priests every single day. The devil hates priests. He wants nothing more than to hand them over simultaneously to the disdain of the world and to the eternal pains of hell. Satan does not tire. Reports of the moral failings of clergy, from parish priests to princes of the Church, continue to embarrass the Church and discourage the faithful, and they remind us of our obligation to pray for priests, for their sake, and for the sake of those whose lives they touch for better or for ill, the seen and the unseen.
 
(...)Making matters more discouraging is that, in a very real sense, clerical deviance and its immediate victims are really the tip of the iceberg. In the case of the meth-dealing priest, his position, influence, and stature in his diocese cannot help but mean that the harm he caused is greater than we know. He was secretary to two bishops, and rector of the cathedral. It is anybody’s guess how much unseen damage this man did from these positions of diocesan authority. How many good priests did he prevent from becoming pastors? How many heretics did he see appointed to the diocesan schools? How much irreverent liturgy did he cause or permit, and how much good liturgy did he hinder? How many good vocations did he discourage?           
How many souls did not get sound Catholic teaching or solid spiritual direction because of this priest? We really have no idea of the spiritual wreckage in the wake of this man’s career.
Pray for the victims of clerical sexual abuse. Pray for the priests whose transgressions have caused so much harm. Pray for the ordinaries who either deliberately concealed or turned a blind eye to the sins of their clergy.
And pray for the Catholics, whose number is known only to God, who suffered—some in ignorance, some in painfully acute awareness—the deception, scheming, irreverence, and heresy of clergy whose intellects and wills, intended for the service of God, were disfigured by their horrifying sins.

Christopher Check is Director of Development at Catholic Answers