The Great Hypocrisy In The Catholic Church – Buz Blog

“Don’t let your lips and your lives preach two different messages” – Unknown

As a practicing Catholic, there is much I love about my religion. There are the Sacraments that really guide us through life from Baptism to marriage and Holy Orders. Like every religion, there are many good Catholics and clergy. Like every religion, there are those individual members who do not exhibit the actions that follow our tenets. Far from being a perfect Christian, as an imperfect sinner, I admit my fallibility. Even so, it seems to me that most of the hypocrisy I have observed in my church is in its leadership, from the Pope, to many of the bishops and cardinals and some priests.

First, let me explain my journey in the Roman Catholic Church. Williams is not a family name usually associated with the Catholic Church. My father’s family was Protestant. He was a ranger in the South Pacific during WWII. He and his squad were behind Japanese lines one time, when they saw five Japanese soldiers walking through a rice paddy. A short time later, they saw a tall blonde man with a rifle following the same path the Japanese soldiers had taken. My father and his men stopped the man and told him that he was heading toward those Japanese soldiers. The man told them he was a Dutch Catholic priest and that the “Japs killed a couple of my parishioners and I’m going to get them.” My dad told me that at that moment he thought, “If a Catholic priest will do that for his parishioners, that’s the church he wanted to belong to.”

My mother’s mother was a lapsed Catholic, her father was a Mason, so she wasn’t brought up as a Catholic. When my dad returned from the war, they both converted and married. Since my parents were both converts, they weren’t as apt as some cradle or generational Catholics, to believe that the Church was always right and that the clergy could do no wrong.

As an example, when I was about 7 or 8, my mom was driving us to Mass one Sunday morning while my dad was in bed sleeping. He had worked late as an LAPD Organized Crime detective. I was worried and asked my mom if it wasn’t a mortal sin to miss mass on Sunday, and wouldn’t dad go to hell if he died before he went to confession. My mom just laughed and said, “Do you think that a good and loving God would send your father to hell because he worked late protecting the people from mobsters and was too tired to go to Mass?” My mother didn’t think so and neither did I.

I lived through the scandals of Catholic priests molesting children. The covering up of these outrages went all the way up to the Cardinal level and most likely to the Vatican. This disgrace was exacerbated by church officials counseling victims not to notify legal authorities and/or by the transfer of pedophile priests to parishes where the victims were less likely to complain. Even during this troubling time, I remained a Catholic. Other religious and secular organizations had their own molesting scandals. I was also loyal because the vast majority of the clergy I knew were true to their vows. (I must add here that I was also very grateful for the excellent education I received at the parochial schools I attended.)

Until a few years ago, the Pope and the church stuck to their religious doctrine, even though they may have been unpopular with the public and even the bulk of Catholics. Whether the issue was gay marriage, abortion or women priests, the Church leaders stuck with their historical beliefs. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is both logical and compassionate.

Pope Francis, by many of his actions, seems to be edging the Church away from its long held creeds. His positions on illegal immigration and environmental issues are problematic to most Americans. It’s not clear to many Catholics whether the Pope’s positions on these issues is because he wants to “modernize” the Church or because of what they view as his tendency toward Liberation Theology.

While there are other instances of the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy, the latest occurred last month when Vice President Vance made the following statement on Face The Nation.

“I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” – Vice President J. D. Vance on January 26, 2025 on Face the Nation

It should be noted that Vice President Vance is a practicing Catholic. It should also be noted that federal revenue for refugee assistance increased from about $15 million in 2019 to $450 million in 2021 when Biden was president. One wonders how much of that money went to Catholic Charities and other Catholic organizations. What do non-Catholics think of their tax dollars going to enable illegal immigrants to cross our borders and overburden our own civil social services.

To Vance’s statement, the Conference responded that federal funding falls short of the overall costs that the church uses for resettling refugees. Now that American Catholics know that, will they be as generous donating to the Catholic charitable organizations?

When the leadership of the Catholic Church is distributing the money of all Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs, to organizations that are contributing to the violations of our immigration laws, the altering of our demographic composition and the impoverishment of our country, their hypocrisy is apparent for all to see.