BLACATHOLIC Fervorinos 9: True Love In the Pew: Open Letter to Clergy, Seminarians & All In Formation Video Link and Transcript
The following is an approximate transcript of my “BLACATHOLIC Fervorinos 9: True Love In the Pew: Open Letter to Clergy, Seminarians & All In Formation” video released on my Facebook page and spread to Twitter on. The transcript below strives for a balance of both a word-for-word account and careful editing for better reading. With [notes], [additions], and omissions for clarity and flow. After this check out more of my BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos and their video transcripts.
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[Video Prescript: The following was filmed in 2023]
How are you doing? This is Justin, the BLACKCATHOLIC, and I am coming at you with another BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino. And if you’re new to my apostolate, BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos are just brief pep talks to get your faith going.
And the title for this BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino is [“True Love in the Pew: An Open Letter to Clergy, Seminarians, and Anyone In Formation.”]
I entered seminary back in 2018. And it was coming right off from what we call the “summer of shame,” because it really wasn’t a very good summer for the Catholic Church. And it really wasn’t all that good of a summer to go into formation to be a Catholic priest at that time, but that’s just the time that I went.
During that summer, the sex abuse crisis was blowing up tremendously, especially in the United States. And I should put in preface “again” because it’s not the first time. Revelations about Cardinal McCarrick were in the airwaves, and people were finding out about the terrible things he did. List after list after list of accused priests of sex abuse were coming out and would continue to come out for months and years after.
Now, it’s 2023. It’s been five years later, and I’m still in seminary. And the problems in the Church have [only seem to grow] and added since then. Division left and right. The Church is filled to the brim with scandal and confusion. And fingers are pointing everywhere and to anyone, to anybody who is seen to be responsible for it all.
With the ongoing effect of the sex abuse crisis, which continues, of course, to this day and with the situation of confusion and scandal all throughout the Church, a question can come to be among those who are leaders in the Church (the priests, the deacons, the bishops, and even those seeking to follow God’s call to this particular vocation, whether it’s seminarians like myself or those going into deaconate formation).
Some of you may feel a very distinct lack of love in the broad situation of the Church. Because if there’s anybody who is going to feel the brunt, the brute force of the problems in the Church and the accusations and the “who’s responsible” type of factor, it’s going to be the leaders. And, in a certain sense, rightly so, the leaders should feel that they’re the most responsible. And even those who are coming just into their ministry for the first time, at the very least, if nobody blames them for anything, they’re going to have something to clean up, a mess to take care of.
So you can feel:
“What more can I add? What difference would I make? Why am I even doing the job that I’m doing? Why am I even going into the trenches into this fiery house that seems to be about to collapse? What difference would I make?”
And that feeling of the lack of love comes back.
You know, even after all this the past five years, years, I have always seen from the very beginning of my journey to now there’s one kind of singular truth. And it comes from the very places that we look out on Sundays and at the weekday of daily Masses. And that is that people still, after all of this, desire, hunger greatly for holy and good Catholic priests, holy and good Catholic deacons, holy and good seminarians and deacon candidates.
They still really want all of this, especially when I see the smiles on people’s faces when I join them as a seminarian for something, or when I see a deacon baptizing a baby and there’s still a family gathered around of close members and extended members. I still see people coming to Mass every Sunday to receive the Eucharist from the hands of a priest. And people still show up loads when the bishop appears.
Somehow, someway, people still desire good and holy Catholic leaders, even after all sorts of abuse in all types of ways that can come from those leaders.
And that, for some of us who may desire to feel true love, seems to me to be a source of true love because after all this, there’s people still coming back to us.
If that’s not true love, then I don’t know what is.
This is Justin, the BLACKCATHOLIC.
Peace.