Another parable he proposed to them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seeds in his field.
But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way.
And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle.
And the servants of the goodman of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle?
And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?
And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it.
Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.
MATTHEW 13:24-30 DOUAY-RHEIMS
I have officially been Roman Catholic for four years. I entered the Church at the same time that Francis became pope. That is the way my life has been for as long as I have known it. Something good happens to me while I am also delivered a frustration. When I became Catholic, a material heretic took the chair of St. Peter, and I knew it. Then, my priest died shortly after my entrance into the Church.
What do I think of the Roman Catholic Church at this stage of the journey? I must admit that I am not so impressed anymore. I had a low opinion of the Church as a Protestant and as a Calvinist. I definitely had a low opinion of the Church as an atheist. Now that I am in the Church and have seen it from the inside, my low opinion is actually lower now.
Why did I ever join up for this? The answer to that is simple. The Roman Catholic Church is the one true church containing the deposit of the One True Faith. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe He is the Son of God, and that He actually rose from the dead. And I believe that He instituted one church. Obedience to Christ means becoming Catholic and remaining Catholic. This is not an issue for negotiation or debate. Once you know that the Roman Catholic Church is the true church, you have a duty and an obligation to get into it and stay in it. Should you refuse to do these things, you will go to Hell.
That is some scary stuff, but there it is. Don't let anyone say that I sugarcoat things because I don't. The Roman Catholic Church is God's instrument of salvation in the world. If you spurn this institution, you will be judged for rejecting Christ. You cannot love Christ and not love His Church or be disobedient to His vicar.
The Martin Luthers of today, our Protestant brothers and sisters separated from the Church by massive ignorance perpetrated and passed down by lying ministers of Satan, point out that the Roman Catholic Church is rife with scandal and corruption. How can I disagree with these observations? It is based in fact. I could chalk it up to bias in the media but even faithful Catholic media report these things which you will find tweeted and retweeted on my Twitter account. From the Pope on down, there are many who distort doctrine, deny doctrine, mishandle funds, scandalize the faithful, and even engage in gross sexual sins and encourage others in this debauchery. Granted, there are those who preserve the faith in both word and deed, but they are the minority in this day and age. This begs another question. Why remain in this?
Conservative writer Rod Dreher was faced with this dilemma after converting to the Roman Catholic Church in 1993. While covering the sex abuse scandal, he became so disillusioned because of the filth that he uncovered that he checked out and became Eastern Orthodox. This is understandable considering that the man has kids. It isn't justifiable, but I do understand. But the problem with the Eastern Orthodox is that they aren't free of the filth either. The sad reality is that sexual abuse of minors is a widespread problem and is present in virtually every institution including scouts, public schools, little league sports, and on and on. This isn't to excuse the wrongdoing in the Catholic Church. But as I say so often, when the Church is bad, it is merely as bad as the rest of the world.
So, if the Roman Catholic Church has so much filth and corruption, what makes it special relative to all of the other filthy and corrupt institutions in the world? This is a question I asked myself before my conversion, and I had to admit one thing. There were no Protestant saints. There certainly were no atheist saints. All of the saints I knew about were in the Catholic Church. There are two things I know. No one can be saint without God's help and grace. And there are no saints outside of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Eastern Orthodox may quibble with me on this matter, but I will simply point to the emperor Constantine who was no saint. He did not lead a venerable life and spurned baptism until he was on his deathbed. His "canonization" is more of a popularity vote than an actual fact. The Roman Catholic Church never canonized the man. As such, any saint not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church is not a saint to me.
Saints aren't perfect, but their lives are so radically different from the world as to make them very special to me. In his novel, The Plague, Albert Camus asks, "Can an atheist be a saint?" My answer is that atheists can be saints only in fiction. They have never existed in fact and never will. This was a conclusion I drew as an atheist.
The saint that I drew the most inspiration from was Maximilian Kolbe. His story moved me profoundly because he lived in relatively modern times. Other saints have lived so long ago that their stories have become mixed with legends and myths. But Kolbe was the bona fide real deal. And his final act of charity to save a condemned man by taking his place puts him on the same level as the great saints and martyrs of old in my book. Yet, he is virtually unknown outside of the Catholic Church. What an awesome human being. Everyone should aspire to be a Kolbe.
It is saints like Kolbe that make the Catholic Church special to me. There are heroes, but a saint is more than just a hero. The hero seeks glory. The saint seeks a crown to cast at the Savior's feet. That is a profoundly different thing.
So, there you have it. The Roman Catholic Church is a mix of otherworldly saints, lots of faithful people who seek to become saints, and some of the lowest scum who would bring shame on a prison full of convicts. Basically, the Church is a mixture of wheat and weeds.
Our Lord told us this in Matthew 13. Whenever Jesus uses the phrase "kingdom of heaven," He is referring to the Roman Catholic Church. He is not talking about Heaven itself as He discusses how the enemy, the Devil, has sown weeds into the field. Heaven is free of such weeds, so the kingdom of heaven and Heaven itself are not synonymous. Nor is He talking about the world because the world is certainly not the kingdom of heaven. It is the Catholic Church which is the kingdom of Christ on earth.
In His parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus tells us that the wheat was planted, but the weeds were the work of an enemy who came and planted his evil seed. We can see that this is what happened with the Catholic Church virtually as soon as it was established as even the Apostles themselves had to struggle and battle with heretics at the outset like the Judaizers and the Gnostics. These heresies would flourish alongside orthodoxy all the way to the present day. Some of the lowest points for the Church were the virtual domination of the Arian heresy that came later, the Cathars, the Protestant Revolt, and the modernism of today. All of these weeds are the work of Satan.
There isn't a day that goes by that I don't read about some scandal involving a priest or a bishop. Their actions are criminal in an extreme way that would make a mafioso blush. Additionally, many prelates and priests exhibit no belief in the Real Presence and actively push and promote heresy in a multitude of ways. Now, we have a pope who seems to be firmly on the side of the modernists.
All of the scandal and heresy in the Church begs a question. The question isn't why is the Church so corrupt. The real question is why corrupt people would want to be in the Church. Think about it. If you were gay and an atheist, why would you ever become a priest? Why would you ever take vows to join a religious order? And if you despised the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, why be Catholic when there are literally thousands of Protestant denominations and sects to suit you? This behavior would be like the Democrats deciding they didn't care about winning elections and that the better way to go would be to become Republicans to tear the party down from the inside. That is insanity and virtually no Democrat does this. But this is what has happened and still happens with the Roman Catholic Church.
The heretics, liars, thieves, and perverts inside the Roman Catholic Church arrive there and remain there under satanic inspiration. They are literally agents of the Devil himself. They do the work and bidding of Lucifer. They are the Devil's weeds in the wheatfield of the Lord, and their mission is to corrupt and subvert the mission of the Church.
The servants in the parable ask a pertinent question. Should we go and root out these weeds? The good man tells them no. For the sake of the wheat, the weeds must be allowed to grow. This is because you cannot tell the difference between one and the other. It is only when the wheat yields its grain that we can tell the wheat from the weeds. This is because the Church is made up of sinners. I am one of those sinners believing at one time in things that I now oppose. I was a Protestant, a Calvinist, an atheist, and on and on. And, then, God opened my eyes, and I repented. It is for the sake of people like me that God tolerates the evil in the world and in the Church.
In conclusion, the only thing I can tell you is to be the wheat. This means embracing the One True Faith, holding firmly to the Magisterium, and working on becoming a saint through the sacraments, devotions, prayer, examination of conscience, and works of mercy. The parable concludes with the harvesting of the wheat into the barn and the binding of the weeds to be burned. The barn is Heaven. The fire is Hell. The evildoers in the Church and all those who work for the Devil will receive their reward. They will be tormented in everlasting damnation forever. Be the wheat.
