Testimony of a former Roman Catholic priest
Every Sunday, our family dedicated half an hour to the liturgy. We consider ourselves practicing Catholics, but in reality religion does not play a very important role in our lives. As a teenager, I was ashamed of my membership in the Roman Catholic Church and avoided going to church whenever I could. Then something happened that changed the direction of my life.
To enter heaven through suffering
While watching the baby of a Protestant neighbor, I stumbled upon a pamphlet on Hell and Eternal Punishment. She convinced me of the terrible reality of hell, and I think so today. Determined to find a way to get closer to God, I immersed myself in Roman Catholic practices. I began to attend liturgy and make rosaries every day, wearing the brown scapular and various medals.
I was told that if I really wanted to know how to get to heaven, then I had to read the lives of the Roman Catholic saints and discover in them how they managed to do it. In this way, I came to the conclusion that the surest way to heaven is to make myself suffer, self-torture. Suffering became my constant companion, but I was careful not to show others how much I was suffering. Then, at the age of 19, I entered the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, where I lived for the next seventeen years under Augustine, first as a postulant, then as a novice, when I took the oath, and finally as a priest.
During the first ten years (it was still before the Second Vatican Council), I never saw a monastery inside, nor did I have the opportunity to be together and talk to real monks or priests. Students preparing to become priests never had personal contact with their superiors and teachers. The deprivations were many, but gradually diminished as we advanced and approached the ordinary. Some of us complained about poor food, insufficient rest time, and degrading, inhuman ascetic living. We thought that was the price we had to pay to become God's people.
The only theme that dominated our lives was submission to authority. I gave up not only the right to own something, my ambitions and personal lives, but I even gave up my mind, intelligence and personal thoughts. We were told that God was speaking to us through the mouths of our superiors, and that any doubt or hesitation in accepting their complete control was a grave sin before God.
"Be holy, for I am holy"
The first duty that came to me as an ordained Roman Catholic priest was somewhat different from before. Instead of being sent to a monastery to help monks or to a parish, I was ordered to continue my studies until I earned a doctorate in chemistry, so I could teach at a Roman Catholic university.
The monastery to which I was sent for this purpose was luxurious, endowed with all comforts, and boasted of the best and most expensive food. But I had not made all the possible sacrifices so many years to finally be able to live in luxury, but to become a true man of God, a saint. Entering the intimate circle of the clergy, I was disappointed and disillusioned to discover how insignificant God was to these people, who were believed to be extraordinarily holy and to love God in a special way.
The part of the day provided for religious service was considered unpleasant. I found (not only here, but wherever I went in the world) that the only clerics who got up in the morning to hold the liturgy were the ones who had the opportunity to celebrate it, and that they felt sorry for it.
I was very glad that, at my request, I was moved to the headquarters of the Augustinian Order in the United States. I hoped to find a center of spiritual power there, but I had to find that instead it was an establishment where many priests were brought when their lives had become so scandalous that they damaged the Church's reputation. Where was that Church which had been described to me, for which I had given my life because of its purity and beauty? Was it possible, I wondered, that she did not exist in the United States because she had been contaminated by Protestantism? Was it possible that it existed in all its purity only in the Roman Catholic countries where it had full freedom of expression and freedom without constraints?
At that time I heard of a Roman Catholic university in a Roman Catholic country that needed a scientist to lay the foundations of the scientific and technical section. I immediately volunteered and soon became the dean of the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry. Needless to say, I didn't find the Church I expected to find there!
Any American Catholic who travels to a Roman Catholic country is embarrassed and shocked by what he sees there. In the United States, the Roman Catholic Church shows its best side and gives its opponents as few opportunities for criticism as possible. On the contrary, in a Roman Catholic country, where it has few opponents or critics, things are completely different.
There is ignorance, superstition and idolatry everywhere, and nothing, or almost nothing, is being done to change the situation. Instead of living life as Christians according to biblical teaching, people focus on worshiping the statues of their local patron saints.
"Don't make your face carved"
For many years I believed that Roman Catholics did not worship idols, but now I saw with my own eyes that there was no difference between Roman Catholics with their statues and icons and pagans with theirs. When I once met an authentic pagan in Cuba who worshiped idols (a religion brought from Africa by their ancestors), I asked him how he could believe that a plaster idol would help him. He replied that he did not expect the idol to help him, but that he only represented the power in heaven that could help him. What terrified me about his answer was that it almost resembled almost literally the explanation Roman Catholics give when they justify worshiping the statues of their saints.
Deeds without faith
Little by little, I dedicated myself to my work at the university. Under my leadership, several large buildings were built and equipped to house the faculties of industrial chemistry, mechanics, architecture, pharmacy and psychology. As soon as a faculty was sufficiently developed, we handed over the responsibility of a qualified dean. I became the assistant rector for science and one of the four members of the executive committee that ran the entire university. Perhaps my greatest success has been the establishment of a Quality Standards Bureau. The industrial enterprises have willingly agreed to accept minimum standards and have concluded contracts with our laboratory for us to check their products and thus be able to ensure a uniform superior quality.
The strongest and richest people, from president to president, co-opted me with honors and gifts, to be their friend and to support their projects and ambitions. However, in the depths of my heart I knew that despite all the honors I had received, I had not achieved the true purpose for which I had come here. Augustine expressed this so well centuries ago: "Thou hast made our hearts for Thee, O God, and they are restless until they rest in Thee."
I had many doubts. I knew that so many things I preached, so many seemingly truthful answers I gave to people were highly controversial among theologians and ridiculed or disregarded by many clerics. I was ashamed of the priests who, over the centuries, robbed people, ignored the poor, supported the rich oppressors, and led a scandalous life.
Firmly determined to save my few remaining years of life, I planned to leave the priesthood and the Church as soon as I received my doctorate in physics and chemistry. I am sure that every priest faces such a decision at some point in his life. The church had promised to make us men of God, but sooner or later after the ordinance, each must take stock of his own conscience. This is the moment when he realizes that it is worse than the day he began, despite using all the means the Church had offered him.
The price of leaving the Church
When a priest decides to leave the Church, it means to him that he will be isolated from most, if not all, of those who loved, honored, and respected him and, more importantly, from those he takes. loved and served. Every priest knows colleagues who have tried to escape, but who then, for one reason or another, have been forced to return. I knew some of them like that too. They told me why they came back: not out of love for Bi-serica, but, among other reasons, to put something on their plate every day and have a decent funeral.
I carefully planned my escape and asked my superiors to give me permission to spend my vacation in Europe. Then, after receiving my doctorate, I bought a second-hand car in Miami and left, thinking of being invisible in a small town where no one knew me. I felt nothing of the joy of liberation and freedom that would have been expected. All the people I had known were now isolated from me through their connection to the Church. I was a stranger to the whole world, further from God than ever before.
Looking for someone to help me find a job, I contacted a certain chemist who worked for me in the Quality Standards Office, but who now lived in Mexico. After I was assured that there were friends to help me, I packed my things and headed south across the Rio Grande.
An acquaintance of the chemist's name was Martha. She lived with an aunt of hers from Spain. Both women were very friendly with me, and when a close friendship developed between us, I had no idea what further influence they would have on my life. Finally, Martha and I got married. Her aunt tried to live again with her husband who had left her, but shortly after he returned, she was found dead in bed. Many clues pointed to her husband as a perpetrator, and so we were involved in one of the most sensational murder trials in Mexican history. Because of the resulting publicity, my name was recognized, and several leading Catholic reporters began attacking me as a deserter priest. Then,
We set off for San Diego, facing difficulties all the way. After working for several months at Convair Astronautics, I was informed of a vacancy in the management of one of their holding companies, Genera Dynamics. Several weeks passed with discussions for employment. Of course, I had to give detailed information about my life, studies and jobs, as well as the addresses of people who could give me references. I listed all this in detail, omitting only the fact that I had been a Roman Catholic priest. Suddenly, just a day or two before I started working at my new job, I received a telegram canceling all the conventions.
I never had direct evidence of what led to this sudden dismissal, but a few days later I received a letter from church authorities warning me to never try to get recommendations from Church-controlled sources again. , because they will always deny that they knew me. Therefore, it was no longer possible for me to find a job that matched my training and experience.
The gift of salvation
I had been taught all my life to be afraid and not to trust Protestant pastors. We were told that they greedily invaded the former priests to use them for their evil purposes. In my desperation, I put aside these prejudices and decided to take the risks. We have found that everywhere in the world, since the time of Jesus, there have been people who could best be called "Christians who believe the Bible." Not people who only believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, but people who believe that it is a personal message from the God who loves them and therefore leaves their lives guided by it.
I borrowed a textbook on Christian teaching from a pastor and found that all references were based on scripture texts, not human logic or church traditions. I first noticed the simple statements in the Bible about how one can go to heaven and escape hell. I realized that Scripture should not be approached in a purely intellectual way, but from the position of children who listen to their father, accepting and believing every word, recognizing that God wants to say what He said and knows how to he says what he means.
Page after page in the Bible, I discovered truths that made me thirsty my whole life. The teaching of salvation is very clear: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not by works, lest any man should boast ” (Ephesians 2: 8-9).
Martha and I agreed that I had done more than almost everyone in the world to get the rescue, but that it was one thing I hadn't done. I had never asked for it as a gift from God. We have decided to ask God to give us this gift of divine grace. We knelt down and prayed together for the first time.
In a spirit of humility and repentance, we asked God to save us, not because of the good we had done or committed to do, but because of the good that Jesus did when He atoned for our sin. through His death on the cross.
Without realizing it, we were born again. Our faith was so young that we didn't even know we were in Christ! From that moment we began to notice changes in our thinking. We began to love the things of God. Since then, in one way or another, the Lord has helped us to bear witness and preach, to win many hundreds of people to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to live a Christian life according to the Bible.
“But ye came to mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the multitude of angels, and to the feast, and to the church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, both to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaks better things than the [blood] of Abel ” (Hebrews 12: 22-24).
Through his lectures and Bible studies, Charles Berry affirms biblical truth and explains Catholicism. His academic background is well known and can be seen in the books he has written.
(Translator: Olimpiu S. Cosma)
[Source: https://bereanbeacon.org/ro/un-preot-cere-gratie-de-la-dumnezeu/]
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