The Diocese of Worcester's "Partners in Charity" fund

Partners in charity or partners in sin?


"If any one comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting; for he who greets him shares his wicked work." (2 John 10, 11).

The Navarre Bible (which I highly recommend) provides some excellent commentary on this scriptural passage: "In the Middle East, hospitality and greetings were not mere marks of courtesy or good manners: they involved a real sense of solidarity and close affinity.  Hence the warning that reception of these people could imply complicity in their evil deeds and the risk of giving scandal to other members of the Church."

If reception of such people can imply complicity in their evil deeds, how much more so actually providing them with financial and other material assistance?  Such assistance regularly occurs within the Worcester, Massachusetts Diocese.  For example, although Fr. Andre Gariepy has promoted Situation Ethics, which was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1952, the retired priest still receives assistance from the diocese's "Partners in Charity" fund (See "Retired pastors but not retired priests," The Catholic Free Press, March 8, 2013 edition, pp. 1, 7).

Situation Ethics, a moral system which rejects moral norms and considers only the circumstances (or situation) and the agent's intention when determining the morality of a human act, is a very destructive belief.  This because it leads to distrust of God.  Pope John Paul II warned in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor that, "..man is no longer convinced that only in the truth can he find salvation.  The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil.  This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law.  Concrete situations are unfavorably contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of men." (No. 84).

And so, the Diocese of Worcester directs some of the monies from its "Partners in Charity" fund to assist a heretic - a priest who has publically rejected immutable moral norms and who has set himself against the teaching of the Church.  It apparently does not bother Bishop McManus, or anyone in a leadership position in the Worcester Diocese, that this priest has perpetrated spiritual violence against the lay faithful entrusted to his care (the people who have a right to Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity - see Veritatis Splendor, 113), by asserting that moral norms such as, "You shall not kill" (Exodus 20: 13) or "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20: 14) are only general "guidelines" and not exceptionless moral truths.

Fr. Gariepy has also promoted Marxist "Liberation Theology," which was condemned in no uncertain terms, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation.'"

Fr. Gariepy has never publically recanted his views which are in opposition to the Magisterial teaching of the Church.

Another priest who receives assistance from monies collected for the "Partners in Charity" fund is Fr. Robert E. Kelley, a serial child abuser who, by his own admission, probably sexually assaulted some 200 girls.  See here for some background on this priest who served time in prison for his crimes.

Should faithful Catholics contribute to "Partners in Charity"?  Or should they ensure that their financial support to the Church is not squandered on priests who abuse the people entrusted to their care either spiritually or physically?

How do we define good stewardship?  Whatever happened to the charitable anathema?

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."