Today’s False Teachers

By Dr. Jeff Mirus; January 05, 2010 11:26 AM

From Catholic Culture

It’s time to look again at the many false “Catholic” teachers among us, who have arisen to lead the faithful astray much as did false prophets in the time before Christ. Wayward bishops, priests, religious and theologians have promoted countless destructive heresies, some of which even deny Who Christ is. This can lead only to spiritual disaster, of course, but too many follow in the wake of their licentious teaching, holding the truth in contempt. The reality is that such teachers exploit the faithful with lies. They have already been condemned; destruction is at work within them.

Consider: If God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into a pit of gloom to await the judgment; if God did not spare the ancients, but preserved Noah as a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when He brought the flood upon the ungodly; if by turning Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes God condemned and made of their inhabitants an example to those who would be unfaithful; if God rescued Lot, who was distressed by the wickedness around him—the lawless deeds which vexed his holy soul day after day—then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge their passions in lust and so come to despise authority.

Such bold and willful teachers are not afraid to revile even the angels, though despite their greater might and power, the angels refrain from pronouncing judgment against them in the presence of the Lord. Nonetheless, these false teachers, born to be caught and killed like irrational animals following nothing but instinct, and rejecting that holiness of which they are so ignorant, will be destroyed through their own wrongdoing. They may count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, but they are only blots and blemishes reveling in dissipation, seeking always to seduce the faithful. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice wavering souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Their end is certain! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray; they have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgressions; it took a dumb ass speaking with a human voice to restrain that prophet’s madness!

Such teachers are waterless springs, and mists driven by a storm; for them, the deepest darkness has been reserved. Uttering loud and foolish boasts, they entice with the passions of the flesh Christians who have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise freedom, but they are really slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.

If any who have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ become once again entangled in those defilements and overpowered, then their last state is worse than the first. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy instruction they have received. Thus do all of our false “Catholic” teachers prove the ancient proverb: The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire.

[Inspired writing? Yes, but not mine. Really inspired, it is in fact, very nearly verbatim, the second chapter of St. Peter’s second epistle. St. Peter might just as easily have written it yesterday as in the middle of the first century. It still rings true, doesn’t it?]