2. The Priest's Life Revolves around the Sacraments
The second presupposition was that the Roman Catholic sacraments gave, as our catechism books said, "outward signs of inward grace". Our mindset, in the words of
Canon 840, was that the sacraments "...contribute in the highest degree to the establishment, strengthening and manifestation of ecclesiastical communion".2
In fact, the sacraments themselves were for us the center of salvation and of sanctification.
For example, regarding confession to a priest, Canon 960 declared that it was "the only ordinary way by which the faithful person who is aware of serious sin is reconciled with God".
Rather than proclaiming the finished work of Christ Jesus as the answer to the problem of our sinful nature and personal sin record, our lives revolved around these physical signs.
Some of us were shocked to read in Dollinger (the most respected Roman Catholic historian) that the sacrament of penance (confession) was unknown in the West for 1,100 years and never known in the East.
Dollinger said, "So again with Penance.
What is given as the essential form of the sacrament was unknown in the Western Church for eleven hundred years, and never known in the Greek."3
How could this be? The bishops were declared to be high priests "first and foremost" (Canon 835).
Were not we as priests also declared to be dispensers of the sacramental system? In the light of God's Word, this was magic rather than the gospel message.
The New Testament has two signs as instituted by the Lord;
yet rather than the two signs,
center stage in the Bible is the proclaimed message.
But for us the sacraments themselves were of major importance. Every day began with Mass.
Our doubts regarding the physical sacraments as central to our life with God began from experience.
Many of us, priests for many years, had baptized countless infants, and had said the words, "I absolve you," over countless heads. We had anointed many aged, sick and accident victims with the words, "May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up."
Year after year we saw the children we had baptized as infants grow up as pagan as the pagans on the mission field. The myriads of people over whose heads we had pronounced absolution came up off their knees as much sinners after our words as before them. When the sick and the aged were neither saved nor "raised up", it was then that some of us dared to check the Bible. Here we discovered: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63).
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The verses in Ephesians shocked us most of all. Our standard definitions of sacraments defined them as "works", as in the famous Canon 8 of the Council of Trent: "If anyone says that by the sacraments of the New Law grace is not conferred ex opere operato [from the work worked], but that faith alone in the divine promise is sufficient to obtain grace, let him be anathema."4
It was difficult even to begin to doubt the sacraments. Much of our time was absorbed by these and other physical signs. During Lent or Holy Week, for example, we had to make arrangements for procuring and putting in order the newly blessed oils, the Pascal candle, the Pascal fire, the palms, the ashes from last year's palms, the processional cross, the thurible with its charcoals and incense, the purple, red and white vestments, and so on. How could any of us dare to hear the Lord's principle stated so clearly in John 6:63: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."
But hear the words we did, as these testimonies bear witness. The Father drew us, showing us our own worthlessness and the sufficiency of his Word. As Jesus said to the Father, "Thy word is truth".(John 17:17).
3. Unfit Subjects for Honor
The last presupposition was the most deeply rooted within us. As a child, before ever wanting to become a priest, I had labored at being "holy". During Lent I would "offer up" candy and sweet drinks to be a better Catholic. I visited nine churches in one day praying alternately "Our Father" six times, "Hail Mary" six times and "Glory Be" six times in each church. Some of us played at being holy by giving white peppermints to our friends when they would kneel down, as if we were the priest giving communion.
As priests, most of us were very enthusiastic about Vatican Council II. When the documents were published, some of us preached from them. One of the most popular documents was "The Church in the Modern World". But when the excitement had calmed, those of us who studied it saw the same message we had lived and preached. Paragraph. 14 states, "...Nevertheless man has been wounded by sin... When he is drawn to think about his real self he turns to those deep recesses of his being where God who probes the heart awaits him, and where he himself decides his own destiny in the sight of God." Paragraph. 17 continues, "Since human freedom has been weakened by sin it is only by the help of God's grace that man can give his actions their full and proper relationship to God."5
This type of modern teaching seemed very much like the old message. The old message was also contained in Vatican Council II documents in a less popular document, No. 6, Indulgentiarum Doctrina, Paragraph. 6 which states: From the most ancient times in the Church good works were also offered to God for the salvation of sinners, particularly the works which human weakness finds hard...
Indeed, the prayers and good works of holy people were regarded as of such great value that it could be asserted that the penitent was washed, cleansed and redeemed with the help of the entire Christian people."6
All these teachings were endorsed by messages at Lourdes and at Fatima. That many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray and to do penance for them was part of our third and biggest presupposition. Grace was, of course, presupposed; but it is you who by means of your suffering and good works merit salvation for yourself and for others.
This is the net in which all of us who lived the works gospel so intensely were most deeply entangled by Roman Catholicism. This two-fold presupposition; that we were somehow holy and right before a holy God because we had prayed and suffered, and that we would continue as holy and righteous men to practise our religion, became our biggest undoing.
Mankind's Condition Before The Holy God Christ Jesus describes man's nature. "That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mark 7:20-23). See also Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things; and desperately wicked; who can know it?
Both Old and New Testaments tell us that we are spiritually dead to God. Adam's sin brought death (Genesis 2:17). Ezekiel states, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20) and Romans 6:23 says, "The wages of sin is death." We are not simply "wounded" as Roman Catholics believe. We are spiritually dead.
The Biblical Message of Salvation We find the remedy for this situation in both Old and New Testaments. The prophet Isaiah declares: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all". Peter and John tell us: "ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from our fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot". "And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (I Peter 1:18-19, I John 2:2)
The Bible clearly states that salvation was Christ's work and his alone: ". . .by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3).
Romans 3:26 says that God is "just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus". One is saved by God's work. Salvation is God's majestic, finished work. Woven through these testimonies is the same scarlet thread of God's sovereign grace. Before him, each person is dead in sin. By grace one is saved, through faith.
What the Bible has to say about priesthood becomes crystal clear in these personal testimonies of men who experienced both the false and the true priesthood (the priesthood of every believer in the once for all sacrifice of Christ Jesus).
The best summary of what happened to these men in the Roman Catholic priesthood is found in the words of Paul in II Corinthians 4:1-2: "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."
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BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Richard Bennett was trained by the Jesuits all of his elementary and high school years in Ireland, where he was born. He had eight years of intense education and formation by the Dominican Order, finishing at the Angelicum University in Rome, Italy, in 1964. He spent twenty-one years as a Roman Catholic priest in Trinidad, West Indies.
In 1986, he was saved by God's grace alone and formally left the Roman Catholic Church and its priesthood. He is married and settled in Portland, Oregon. Since 1990, he has been director of the evangelistic outreach, Berean Beacon, whose primary task is to evangelize the lost, particularly Roman Catholics, and to inform evangelical Christians by speaking and by distributing literature and tapes concerning Roman Catholicism.
In 1994, he published the book, Far from Rome, Near to God: The Testimonies of Fifty Former Catholic Priests, of which he and Martin Buckingham of England are the editors. The book is presently in its second edition and is published by The Banner of Truth Trust. It is also published in Italian, and Polish, and will soon be available in Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog. He has also published The Truth Set us Free: Twenty Former Nuns Tell Their Stories. He has written several tracts for evangelizing Roman Catholics, available in Spanish, English, and other languages.
Mr. Bennett and his wife are members of Reformed Baptist Fellowship of Portland, Oregon. To contact him, write him c/o Berean Beacon, P. O. Box 55353, Portland, OR 97238, e-mail him at bereanbennett@juno.com or call 503-257-5995. [Bro. Bennett also has a website].
