The truth begins with basic facts. John 6:53,”If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.” That simple sentence, along with Mt 16:18-20 and the accounts of Communion at The Last Supper/First Mass, makes it clear that He founded One Church to provide His Body and Blood to His most faithful believers. He decreed:
“Verily, verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.” The passage is clear: He gave that Church “the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven”.
Elsewhere, He gives those ordained in living link with those first Catholic Bishops whom He ordained this authority: “Those whose sins you forgive on earth are forgiven in Heaven.”
Then, it gets even more serious for the clergy in schism. Three Gospel passages must be heeded by those who take Jesus seriously!
Mk 9:42 and Luke 17:2 repeat the thoughts of Mt 18:6: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
The clergy in schism must ask themselves: “I am working to keep my fellow Christians from receiving Catholic Communion. That is the only way that His Body and Blood and the subsequent “life” they provide can be obtained on earth. Only The Church He Founded promises its priests the power to forgive sins. Am I working in the cause of death and damnation? At the end of the day, how can I not be ‘leading them astray’?”
Clergy in schism: what of their souls? Can they escape the millstone? If we are afraid to ask such basic questions as these, are we letting our neighbors be led astray?
Jesus has no questioners but us. If we fail to ask these important questions, what of our own souls?
