Persecution is a daily reality for many Catholics around the world. For most people in the West, however, it’s not a death sentence to wear a scapular or attend Mass daily. But owing to decadence and spiritual sloth, persecution is coming to places where Catholicism was once the center of culture.
At the beginning of the China flu scare in 2020, American bishops cut most Catholics off from the sacraments and some very good priests got caught up in it.
On Holy Thursday, the feast of the anniversary of the Holy Eucharist and the priesthood, Fr. Sergio Fita, pastor of St. Anne Roman Catholic Parish in Gilbert, Arizona, apologized to his parishioners during the homily for cutting them off from the sacraments:
I ask for forgiveness for having left you without the Eucharist for many weeks last year. Many of you, in the most difficult moments of the pandemic, turned to your father for bread, and we gave you a stone. We failed you by denying you the only Food that could sustain your hope. We abandoned you when we should have been closest to you. For this, at this holy Mass, I ask your forgiveness.
The worst thing is that I cannot assure you that such a thing will not happen again because, as far as I know, I have not heard anyone express regret for what happened. What I can promise you is that I will never again be a party to something similar and that, if obedience places me in such a situation again, I will withdraw so as not to be a responsible and guilty party to something that, even today, weighs on my conscience as the act of which I am most ashamed in my entire life.
It’s amazing to get an admission and an apology from a priest, but it was the American bishops who ultimately made the decision, and none of them have offered any sort of apology.
It’s high time that faithful Catholics stand up for the truths of their faith.
Father John Hardon, a catechist sent by Pope St. John Paul II to teach the faith in North America, once remarked, “Any Catholic who is not about the business of evangelization might never entertain a serious hope for the Beatific Vision.”
Learn more by watching The Download—The Coming Persecution.
