Father John Corapi has apparently resigned himself to live his faith outside the priestly ministry. I just read his good-bye letter and I must say that I sympathize with him. I share with him the same experience with the only difference that -unlike Father John- frankly I don’t care.
Corapi is not the first to experience this kind of persecution. Padre Pio was accused in almost the same exact way when he was about the age of Fr. Corapi. I have read Padre Pio’s biographies (there is more than one) and I can see that this is a systemic problem.
“Of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” said Someone wiser than all of us. I have listened extensively to Fr. Corapi and I never-ever heard him say anything remotely unorthodox. He started experiencing rejection from the beginning. That is the lot of saints and a sure sign of a charism that the Lord bestows only on those closest to His heart. Everything that is touched by the Cross becomes fruitful and more so when Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, gives to one of His own some of the selected splinters of His Cross.
This August 15 will be the 10th anniversary of being received in the Church. In these ten years I have learned a lot about the kind of people that God has called to his Church. I learned of that most curious creature: the cradle catholic that goes about believing in the most heinous heresies but is prompt to correct the orthodox fresh convert with the words “I’ve been in the Catholic Church all my life.” They are all around us, yet they work against anything that can help the advancement of the Gospel in the Church. Father Corapi’s powerful voice thunders like St. Paul’s “of all sinners I am the foremost.” Do you want to exile Paul’s letters also? I don’t think so. Father Corapi is experiencing the wrath of the Sanhedrin. What an honor! What a medal he will have to show in Heaven if he stays loyal to Christ until the end. Purging past sins, you bet. We all must do that and there is no way around it. I heard that from Fr. Corapi many times: “No pain, no gain. No Cross, no crown.”
My prayers are with him and mostly with those misguided shepherds who have left the flock and now attack the few that still take care of the sheep. Millstone neckties are being hewn as we speak. Who shall wear them? Tremble those who love their sin more than justice, and darkness more than the light of Christ.
Sempre avanti, Father John!
Carlos Caso-Rosendi
Real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms.
Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1969