Two priests of the Worcester Diocese: Fr. Leo-Paul LeBlanc and Fr. Andre Gariepy

On November 5, 1977, in a locution to Father Stefano Gobbi, Our Lady, referring to the purification to come (and which we're beginning to live through now), said, "Do not stop to consider the ever thickening darkness, the sin which has been set up as the norm of human action, the suffering which is mounting to its peak and the chastisement which this humanity is preparing with its own hands."

Father Leo-Paul LeBlanc, the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Winchendon, like many of his contemporaries within the Diocese of Worcester and beyond, disagrees with Our Lady.  In fact, in a homily given during the 9:30 a.m. Mass yesterday, Fr. LeBlanc asserted that it is a "confused theology" which advances the idea that God sends punishments (or chastisements).  God, insisted this proud cleric, "doesn't work that way."

How then does Fr. LeBlanc explain the Flood which destroyed the known world in Noah's time?  How does he explain the five cities of the plain - Sodom and Gomorrah - which were wiped out because of the grave sins [primarily homosexual acts] which were being committed there?  It was the holy angels who told Lot, "We are about to destroy this place, for the outcry reaching the Lord against those in the city is so great that he has sent us to destroy it." (Genesis 19: 13).

Only a foolish man would attempt to "correct" God's Holy Word.  And that Holy Word is most clear, for those who haven't lost their supernatural faith while succumbing to a radical secularism.  We read: "I will punish them for their sin" (Exodus 32: 34); "he does not leave the guilty unpunished" (Exodus 34: 7); "I will punish you for your sins seven times over" (Leviticus 26: 18); "I will choose their punishments" (Isaiah 66: 4); "on the wicked he will rain coals and sulphur" (Psalm 11: 6); "I will punish their sin with the rod" (Psalm 89: 32); "the wicked will not go unpunished" (Proverbs 11: 21); "God knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment" (2 Peter 2: 9); "the Lord will punish the powers in heaven and the kings on earth" (Isaiah 24: 21); "the Lord is coming to punish the people of the earth for their sins" (Isaiah 26: 21); "the Lord will punish men for all such sins" (1 Thessalonians 4: 6).

God doesn't send punishments?  The Scriptures tells us otherwise.

Father LeBlanc implied in his homily that there is really no difference between mortal and venial sin, asserting that faithful Catholics who view AIDS as a punishment for grave or mortal sin should look at their own sins and not see the disease as resulting from sin.  In doing so, Fr. LeBlanc employed the word "gay" to refer to homosexuals or sodomites, which itself is evidence that he has succumbed - on some level - to radical homosexual agitprop.  To begin with, yes we are all sinners.  But as the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear: "Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity.  The distinction between mortal and venial sin (which apparently is lost on Fr. LeBlanc), already evident in Scripture, became part of the tradition of the Church.  It is corroborated by human experience...Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.  Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends or wounds it." (CCC, 1854, 1855).

Some sins are so vile that they cry to heaven for vengeance.  The Catechism lists among these "the sin of the Sodomites" (See CCC, 1867). 

Having succumbed on some level to homosexual ideology, Fr. LeBlanc rejects the idea that AIDS is a punishment for homosexual acts and a culture which has largely embraced homosexuality.  Saint Paul, however, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that those who exchange natural relations for unnatural receive "in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Romans 1: 27). 

Whether Fr. LeBlanc cares to acknowledge it or not, God does send chastisements.  In fact, Scripture assures us that He chastises the son he favors.  As Father Albert J. Hebert, S.M., has explained, "The chastisement actually involves a complexity of severe trials and tribulations for the human race: natural disasters of all types like floods and tidal waves, storms, quakes, eruptions, economic disasters, famines, plagues, diseases which will include incurable ones, revolutionary activities, indiscriminate terrorist bombings, civil, racial and religious strife; wars, persecutions...Many of these sufferings will be either from nature or from one's own fellowman.  The demons will urge them on in this mutual self-destruction and there will be much destruction by the demons themselves.  A sort of petic justice and retribution!  Man, along with Satan, makes his own hell, even on earth."

And aren't we beginning to see these things take place?

Also yesterday, Fr. Andre Gariepy, a retired priest of the Worcester Diocese who currently resides in Fitchburg, celebrated Mass for Fr. Joseph Jurgelonis at Saint Martin's Parish in Otter River.  It is most unfortunate that this parish should call upon Fr. Gariepy to fill in for Fr. Jurgelonis while he is away.  For Fr. Gariepy has asserted that, "There are no absolutes, the Ten Commandments are only guidelines."

Only guidelines?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, referring to the Decalogue (The Ten Commandments - see Exodus 20), explains that, "Since they express man's fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbor, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations.  They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere.  No one can dispense from them.  The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart." (CCC, 2072). 

Fr. Gariepy is opposing the Magisterial teaching of the Church.

Pope John Paul II also emphasizes the immutability of the Ten Commandments while explaining that they are the path to life: "In acknowledging these commandments, Christian hearts and our pastoral charity listen to the call of the One who 'first loved us' (1 Jn 4: 19).  God asks us to be holy as he is holy (cf. Lv 19: 2), to be - in Christ - perfect as he is perfect (cf. Mt 5: 48).  The unwavering demands of that commandment are based upon God's infinitely merciful love (cf. Lk 6: 36), and the purpose of that commandment is to lead us, by the grace of Christ, on the path of that fullness of life proper to the children of God." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 115).

Advocates of the emerging New Age religion, the humanitarian religion of the Antichrist, insist that the Ten Commandments are essentially obsolete (see here) and that Christianity is a barbaric religion which is not fit for modern man.  It must, therefore, be purged of its fundamental dogmas and eventually reinterpreted.  For such people, the religion of the future must be man-centered.  Everything is relative.  Morals are not absolute.  Traditional values are outdated and meaningless and are advanced by ignorant men.  They must be discarded.  A watered-down social gospel (such as that promoted by Deacon Richard Tatro of Saint Martin's parish) is okay, but any serious talk about conversion, heaven and hell is "backward" and "obsolete."