Who is your Neighbor?

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Priests are Applauded

On the weekend of 07/13/13 during the homily, we heard unbelievably one of the errors that our priests frequently make and spread throughout the Church—errors that have been made for decades now and have become second nature. Nevertheless, our priests are applauded over and over again.

Is there anything that the public won’t applaud? Any little thing they say is a blessing, as demonstrated by everyone’s applause for everything they say—even if it’s nonsense masked by theology.

These are the pitiful errors that our priests make that no one notices and no one cares about, yet they hurt thousands upon thousands of people without them knowing it.

This is the power a priest has in hurting so many innocent when, as the authority of the Church, is himself misinstructed and ill-informed.

This error is one that they themselves marvel at, savor, and enjoy as they speak of one’s neighbor, and of course, since this has to do with a ministerial evangelical matter, they are the absolute authority when speaking. They don the cassock. If ever a layman would dare clarify something to a priest, it would result in his/her excommunication and the repudiation from the “die-hard” leaders, that is, leaders who defend them at all costs without reason or any evangelical foundation whatsoever.

Who is your neighbor?

Parable of the Good Samaritan: Luke 10, 29-37.

The Good Samaritan is Misunderstood

To this day, none of our priests have been able to understand or perhaps have not wanted to confront this parable in the way originally taught to us by Christ. It’s astonishing really how the Dioceses, our Bishops, and priests of the highest clerical status—it would seem—are truly some beggars and ignoramuses in the most elemental teachings given to the Church by Christ our Lord.

It even seems like the Church itself doesn’t know what a parable (i.e. literary tale) is or means. We would even go so far as to calling this child’s play, that is, the fact that we even have to bring up this point is childish.

Priests Repeat Like a Broken Record

Nevertheless, it so happened that during the homily the priest was explaining in his own way the charity that we should have towards our neighbor, towards the needy and how we should treat them. This priest loved to use the word charity like a broken record, and clearly, he didn’t even know what he was saying since he continually misused the word. Above all, however, he mentioned how the world goes round and round, and that we never know when things from our past will come back to bite us, therefore—he was saying—we should understand the importance of being charitable with others, so that when it’s our turn, we will be recompensed.

This speech is truly so disheartening and so embarrassing that we basically didn’t want to continue hearing it.

Now let us get to the matter at hand. The question would be: What wrong is there in the teaching that this priest gave?

Well to be honest…What good things did he say in his homily? He practically said nothing good. However, for an audience that doesn’t understand anything, it was marvelous. He taught us what he wanted to, according to his own interpretation, but Christ was left out of the true message, as we shall see. However, everyone was delighted because they heard what they wanted to hear from a priest.

Contradicting the Church Means Being Against It, or rather, It Means Standing Before Christ

Dear readers, at this time we wish for you to see that in order to affirm and contradict what the Church has been teaching for centuries, decade after decade, we must be close, very close…we would say that one should be extremely close to Christ—it’s not a joke! The Apostle Paul would say in his day, it’s no longer me but Christ himself who lives in me. That is to say, it must be Christ himself who speaks today and at this very moment in order to teach what, today, you shall discover.

And the canonical right No. 212:3 says: “The faithful…have the right and sometimes even the obligation—in light of their own knowledge, proficiency, and standing—to manifest unto the sacred Pastors their opinion concerning that which involves the well-being of the Church and to manifest to the rest of the faithful—keeping always the integrity of the faith and traditions—reverence unto the Pastors, taking into account the usefulness of the common good and dignity of the persons.”

The priest taught us that one’s neighbor is everyone and especially the neediest…magnificent teaching! For, in this way, who doesn’t agree? Everyone will agree, of course! There is no need to attend a seminary and acquire preparation for becoming a priest in order to come up with teachings like these.

The Church is Judge

In this biblical verse, the legist, not being satisfied, asked Jesus: Who is my neighbor?

That is to say, this legist already had his own information or knowledge about what it meant to be one’s neighbor, in the same way that our Catholic Church has it today. Nevertheless, he dared ask Jesus in order to test him, the same way that the Church does so today with us laymen, in order to see if our teachings are valid and if we adhere to the politics and corrupt interests of our Church today.

Priests Don’t Practice Mercy

And so Jesus our Lord told him a parable of an individual who came down from Jericho and was assaulted by some thieves. After having crossed that path, both a priest and a Levite, finally a Samaritan has pity on this person in need. This Samaritan cured him and paid to rehabilitate his health.

Then Jesus our Lord asks the unsatisfied legist, “Of the three that passed by, who do you think was the neighbor?”

The legist wisely answered, “The one who practiced mercy.” Then Jesus our Lord tells him, “Go and you do the same.”

Your Neighbor Is Christ Himself

We don’t need to be all that smart to figure out the message: Jesus never said that your neighbor was someone in need or who was dying. Jesus didn’t say that your neighbor was literally a neighbor, the mechanic, or simply anyone; rather, it’s only he who practices mercy. And the one who truly practices mercy is only God and that was Jesus. In the parable, Jesus was represented by a Samaritan, since Samaritans were disparaged by the Jews. In exact parallel to the Samaritans, Jesus our Lord was also disparaged by his own race or people, that is, the Jews. This is the same thing that happens to us laymen when we wish to evangelize in our communities nowadays; that is, we are disparaged and rejected by our own Church.

Your Neighbor is God

In other words, the parable of the Samaritan teaches us that the sick or needy are the ones who need help from the neighbor, and our neighbor is solely God. That’s why our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us that those who need a medic are not those who are healthy but those who are sick.

That is to say, those who need their neighbor or doctor are the sick or needy. Put another way, when you go to the doctor, you wouldn’t want surgery to be performed on you by an unlicensed surgeon; rather, it has to be an authorized surgeon in order for the healing to be done without risks and the recuperation of your health to be guaranteed.

In this same way, we all need a neighbor to guarantee our safety, for our life to not be in danger, and so that we may reach our goal unharmed and healthy.

Your Neighbor Is Only He Who Practices Mercy

Therefore, Jesus is extremely clear; your neighbor is anyone who practices mercy as God does with humanity. Jesus never said that one’s neighbor consisted of everyone in the world and even less so did he say it was the sick or the needy; one’s neighbor, then, consisted only of those who followed God’s law and demonstrated mercy to others.

Now let’s be clear: When we go out seeking strife with others, it isn’t possible to be one’s neighbor but rather the antichrists. On the other hand, if we fight to do good for humanity, then we do as God does, and we become the neighbor for others.

Only by doing good and seeking the salvation of others do we become neighbors, since God appoints himself as everyone’s neighbor, and we cannot be other people’s neighbors unless we follow God’s example, that is, of Christ our Lord.

The Church Contradicts Christ

However, the Church has been set on spreading the error that your neighbor is everyone and anyone in the world without considering the teaching from Christ our God, Lord, and owner of the Church. The Church loves its politics and loves to always get on everyone’s good side, especially when seeking alms, yet the person whom the Church pleases the least is its very owner, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Definitely, therefore, this priest and many others who teach these errors during the homilies are truly a calamity and an embarrassment. Without a doubt, they need to go back to the seminary or let themselves be taught by more competent individuals. But of course for a priest, this represents a humiliating and shameful debasement, so it’s much easier to abuse their authority in order to hush laymen and stop them from pestering.

Laypersons Are Prisoners of Protestantism

How much of a concern is it really to a priest nowadays if a layman ends up in another religious denomination?!

Good job and congratulations to the Church, for our priests embarrass Christ our Lord by disparaging its sheep and sending them outside the flock—allowing for ravenous wolves to kill them and eat them.

Surely we should praise the clergy for such powerful evangelical work and for their impressive workers, all of which genuinely scatter and destroy the people of God. This, we should celebrate!

Since when does the Church have the right to change the gospel and spread a Gospel which Christ has not instructed or ordered to be taught?!

Priests Must Be Reprimanded

Let us recall that the Apostle Paul told the community of the Galatians with all certainty that, “Even when we ourselves or an angel from heaven announces to you a gospel different from the one we have announced to you: let him be anathema!” That is to say, such an individual should be exterminated and thrown out from God’s people.

In the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord all-mighty says, “But if a prophet has the presumption of saying in my name a word which I have not ordered to be said, and if he speaks in the name of other gods, then such a prophet shall die.”

Paul himself tells the community of the Corinthians, “And there is nothing strange about Satan himself disguising himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it’s not much of a stretch to say that his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of justice; however, his aim will be in line with his actions.”

Priests Are the Cause of Protestantism

For isn’t this the reason Catholics change their religion!? And when our priests are corrupted, isn’t it they who cause discouragement in the laity? And if our priests are mistaken, how much more mistaken are the rest of the assistants and those in charge of the parochial ministries (i.e. prayer groups, charismatic groups, seminarians, Knights of Columbus, Marians, members of Church courses, etc., etc., etc…), that is, those who don’t know anything about what they themselves teach and even less so about what it means to be a neighbor, despite having acquired gray hairs from the years of service in their ministries. That is, they’re still greenhorns even though they act like teachers.

For isn’t this the cause of deficiency in Church doctrine? Or are we going to continue blaming some mystical, invisible being!? Or sure, why not, let’s put the blame on some useless layman!

Log in the Church

That is, before deliberating about others, the Church should instead remove the log it has in its own pupil and correct itself first.

Jesus Christ calls such individuals: hypocritical Pharisees. Do we really need to be blind in order for us to not see the errors our priests make?

If we laymen, being learned in the doctrine and theology within the Catholic Church itself, feel the baleful rejection from our own Church, how do you suppose, dear reader, that unlearned laymen without advanced doctrinal knowledge would feel in discovering errors and not being able to find an answer to their controversy, or how about not having anyone to turn to for answers to their doubts!?

Isn’t it easier for this layman to leave the Catholic Church and form part of another religious denomination that’s waiting to receive them with open arms?

Let us recognize with sincerity the enormous task that we all have in the Church. Despite this consideration, our priests reject our efforts to help in evangelism; for, there are always people at hand to help with fundraisers and monetary collections in parishes, especially our very priests who, of course, shouldn’t be meddling in these matters.

Our priests love intermixing the collection of money with Evangelism, and therefore no one dedicates themselves to teaching or learning the Church’s doctrine; for money is king, and in every Ecclesiastical ministry, money always trumps everything else.

When it comes to real evangelical teaching, however, our Church lacks true evangelists, and when these evangelists appear, they are immediately exterminated by the very Church. Yes of course, Christ’s life keeps on being repeated over and over again. In the same way that the Jewish people condemned Christ, our Church nowadays repeatedly condemns and dismisses righteous lay-Catholics, faithful to Christ.

The Church, therefore, thinks it best for those “know-it-all” evangelists to not even show up because such evangelists will immediately be shut out from the Church. And we have to be cautious because as the saying goes, El diablo no es diablo por diablo, sino por viejo (i.e. A Spanish saying that roughly means: The devil isn’t who he is by the fact that he’s the devil but rather because of his old age). That is, over many years the Church has become expert and very knowledgeable in its craftiness of sequestering and exterminating whomever.

Of course, no worries: our Lord Jesus Christ was the first martyr or progenitor of martyrs who suffered extramurally, disparaged by his own people, and if this happened to the household owner, what won’t they do to the other household members, that is, what won’t the Church do to its own laymen?

Our Lord Jesus suffers and is very discontent with the many wrongs that the Church nowadays keeps repeating. He weeps on our altars and our eternal Father detains his hand against humanity only because of the tears of blood that his beloved Son sheds.

Only He is our neighbor, and He is the one who has mercy on us. Only He is the Eternal Priest who pleads on our behalf. Let us rectify our lives and iron out the imperfections so that God our Father desists from bringing catastrophes upon humanity.

Kind regards, blessings, and peace from us and the Lord Jesus.
And from your lowly brother:
Jesé Retoño,
Editorial Piedrecita.

Translation by León Jesuita.
Image Art by Javier Calvo.

Note: Our publication concerning the topic of one’s neighbor explains in greater detail the etymological origin of what a neighbor is, in addition to many other veritable and important points for understanding the truth enclosed in this mystery of one’s neighbor.
Look for our upcoming publications.
THANK YOU.

Esta página está tambien disponible en: Español (Spanish)