Fr. David Sherry
District Superior of Canada

Dear Reader,

Have you ever noticed that when someone accuses another intemperately, it’s often an accusation of what he is himself but doesn’t admit? It’s certainly a giveaway of a Pharisee. “Now we know that thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil” means in Pharisee-speak “we are not true followers of God and are sons of the father of lies, you are not like us.” “We found this man plotting against Caesar” translates as “We would love to plot against Caesar, but this Man wasn’t.”

The Pharisaical critics of the Church of Christ err from the truth and then accuse the Catholic Church of the very error they themselves commit. They remove those institutions which give woman dignity and then turn around and accuse the Church of demeaning women. They flood the world with obscenity and without a blush accuse Catholics of being obsessed with sins against the sixth commandment.

The essence of a Pharisee being one who makes justice sit on the outside rather than on the inside, you might well suspect that the Protestant “Reformers” would be in on the act, and you would be right. They made it an axiom that every man was inspired and infallible when interpreting Sacred Scripture and they submitted the spiritual power to the temporal one. In England, the King became supreme head of the Church, and in the Empire, Cuius Regio eius Religio (which means “you better follow the religion of your ruler whether it’s true or false or else”) became the governing principle. In short, a man would make up the religion as he went along. Then, broadening his phylacteries and enlarging his fringes, the Protestant turns on the Catholic Church and accuses Her of having a head who usurps the place of God. But, dear separated brother, the power you impute to the pope is the one that, in reality, you give to men – that of making up a religion. Peter is not nearly so powerful; he has to stick to the Faith as was handed down by the Apostles. His infallibility does not give him any power to invent new truths, it merely prevents him from solemnly declaring what is error in matters of Faith. And if, as has happened once or thrice, a pope otherwise teaches error, it serves as the counterexample which proves the rule: I obey Peter insofar as he is the servant of the Faith; if he deviates from it, I must obey God rather than men.

Fr. David Sherry