Fr. Epperson's homily...

We went to the walk for life on Saturday and we stayed in Ukiah last night. We went to Mass at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church this morning. We had never been in the church, nor had we met the pastor there. To our delight we heard one of the best sermons ever preached. I have not blogged for a while. It kinda did not fit me very well. I needed a place to let people read this sermon, so here I am on this old blog.

Father Epperson’s sermon on the third Sunday in Ordinary Time Jan 23, 2011.

The readings addressed division in the church.

I was so impressed with his sermon, I asked for a copy. He gave me the copy he used on the Altar. I have entered it to this file EXACTLY as he wrote it in his notes with his punctuation and abbreviations. To be fair, keep in mind that it was not intended to be distributed in this way, but rather it was to be spoken by the man who wrote it. Enjoy…

His sermon:

There is nothing more demoralizing and destructive going on in our Catholic Church today than division, and it’s everywhere. Division causes peace and joy to evaporate and replaces them with tension and squabbling.

Recently an article appeared in a magazine for priests. This article was written by a priest. It condemned Pope John Paul as ‘out of touch in scripture and limited in theology, a bad listener.’ Pope Benedict and Pope Paul VI were similarly attacked.

The Priest dissents from various key teachings of the Church, calling them ‘policies’ and consistently refers to the vocation of the priesthood as a ‘job’. All in all, and without exaggeration, this article was enough to make one depressed.

What was totally lacking was love for and trust in the Church. The next article, by another priest, aimed to demonstrate that missing Mass was not a big deal and should not worry us so much, he spoke as though Holy Mother Church had never existed.

Indeed, Chloe’s people were right: My dear brothers, it is clear that there are serious differences among you. // The ‘serious differences’ are really a profound crisis of faith. Catholics are unbelievably confused about the faith. It seems all has boiled down to ‘opinions’ rather than obedience.

There is continual and deliberate spreading of errors in every segment of the Catholic Church by large numbers of priests, religious and laity. The interior disunity of the Church is a bleeding sore which no one seems willing to stem. What a disaster!

And what suffering for those Catholics who know the faith and know how things should actually be in their parishes! Almost entirely gone is any notion of sin and so there is a general acceptance of those who habitually live in sin and there are many who do so.

Confession has all but disappeared as a result of the confusion caused by disobedient priests. All this has resulted in parishes with great attendance at the parish barbeque and small numbers seriously living the Christian life.

As a priest committed to the orthodoxy in faith and morals, in liturgical worship, obedience to Rome and especially, love for the Church, I meet with extraordinary opposition from priests and laity who are strangely angered and even scandalized at me. I believe it is because these priests have somehow come to believe that they have been commissioned to change the Church while I, and many like me, have clung to the apparently outdated notion that we should be letting the Church try to change us.

Pope Paul VI, one year before his death, said: There is a great uneasiness, at this time, in the world and in the Church, /that which is in question is the faith …PVI What strikes me, when I think of the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism, there seems sometimes to predominate a non-Catholic way of thinking, and it can happen that this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism, will tomorrow become the stronger. But it will never represent the thought of the Church. (Paul VI)

From prison St. Paul wrote to implore the Ephesians to preserve ‘the unity of the Spirit’ so that they would not be ‘carried along by every wind of doctrine, at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in practicing deceit.’

To Timothy he wrote: The time is sure to come when, far from being content with sound teaching, people will be avid for the latest novelty and collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes and then, instead of listening to the truth, they will turn to myths. Be careful always to choose the right course… .

Be careful always to choose the right course! This is not advice; it is a warning – a warning on which depends our relationship with Christ and His Church and, therefore, our eternal future.

Many orthodox priests are anguished by the present state of our Church. Pope Paul VI rightly foresaw that it would become worse in succeeding years. I call upon you, my friends, to be equally concerned and to make every effort you can to learn the Faith and live the Faith of the Catholic Church and to resist anyone, anywhere, who attempts to pervert or misrepresent it.