I’ve just received an e-mail from a friend who confessed to feeling a little depressed about the way that a bad priest is prospering in Rome. I thought I’d share my response:

 

As for the Church, I am always consoled by the fact that as it is now it has always been. Look at the heresies that threatened to rip the early Church apart; or the corruption of which Dante and Chaucer write; or the fact that there have on occasion been two or even three people claiming to be pope at the same time; or the fact that popes have been imprisoned in the Vatican or exiled from it; or, for that matter, the many popes who have been martyred; or the English Martyrs.

 

As for the bad priests in Rome (and elsewhere), I am reminded of the famous riposte of a cardinal in Rome to the boasts of Napoleon. When Napoleon claimed that he would destroy the Church, the cardinal responded that he doubted that Napoleon would succeed when the clergy had been trying to destroy the Church for centuries!

 

The gates of hell will not prevail …