In these days, when we are constantly inundated with a chorus of voices speaking unfair words against the Successor of Saint Peter, I feel that it might be good to look at these things from a different perspective.
Has it occurred to anyone that the Year for Priests has been very difficult, indeed painful, for the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI? The two high points in the liturgical year are Christmas and Holy Week. It is in this Year for Priests that these important moments have been marked by vicious and inhumane attacks on the Holy Father. Recall the Christmas Midnight Mass of this Year for Priests. The Pope was physically attacked by a deranged woman who pulled this great man to the marble floor of Saint Peter's Basilica. One might easily view this as simply a bizarre event, an event capable of happening at any large gathering. I believe there is more to it.
Now, Holy Week in the Year for Priests: The Vicar of Christ is subjected to attacks of a different kind. Not physical attacks, but verbal ones. Constantly. Every day. The media mocks him. Money-loving lawyers threaten him and his allies. Dissident "catholics" make irreverent sport of him. Reporters use false information, mindless contradiction, inaccuracies, and partial truths to malign this great priest of the Church.
Yes. Pope Benedict is a priest of the Catholic Church, and this is why he is suffering in the Year for Priests. He is suffering because he is a priest. Think about it. Why are all the attacks against the Holy Father so prominent now? Why this year? Why not last year? Or the year before? Or next year? No one can fail to notice a remarkable coordination of the efforts of all these people to bring down the Pope. Bring down the Pope. Isn't that precisely what the deranged woman did at the Midnight Mass for Christmas? Is it possible that the attack against Pope Benedict on Christmas is related to the attacks against him in Holy Week? Immediately, one is inclined to say they are not related. I, however, am inclined to say they are.
The Pope is being attacked now because it is the Year for Priests. What is really being attacked is the Priesthood itself. The remarkable coordination of these attacks is not a coincidence. Someone is behind it all; someone who despises the Priesthood, someone who is threatened by the mission of Christ's priests; someone who is - to borrow a Biblical phrase - a "world ruler of this present darkness." In this regard, people should think twice about joining the chorus of voices against Pope Benedict.
Dear brothers and sisters, pray for the Holy Father, pray for the Priests, and pray for the conversion of sinners. God bless you.
