(LifeSiteNews) – Following criticism of comments she made about the U.S. Catholic bishops, conservative firebrand U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene revealed that she was raised Catholic but left the Church “with great sorrow” when she had kids because she had concerns about the left-wing hierarchy protecting abusive priests.
“With great sorrow, and unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, I stopped attending Catholic Mass when I became a mother, because I realized that I could not trust the Church’s leadership to protect my children from pedophiles, and that they harbored monsters even in their own ranks,” the now-evangelical said in a lengthy statement.
The Georgia Republican was responding to the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue, who slammed her for suggesting in an interview with Church Militant’s Michael Voris that “Satan is controlling the Church.”
“The Church is not doing its job. And it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ,” she added.
“It’s the Church leadership I was referring to when I invoked the Devil,” Greene clarified on Twitter. “Just so we’re clear, bishops, when I said ‘controlled by Satan,’ I wasn’t talking about the Catholic Church. I was talking about you.”
Today, I released the following statement regarding @CatholicLeague President Bill Donohue’s comments. pic.twitter.com/3jFHGmti3X
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 27, 2022
“The Catholic Church must throw out these monsters instead of lecturing the people its own bishops have driven away,” she continued, blasting the U.S. Catholic bishops as “some of the worst in the world” and “scheming bureaucrats in miters.” It was the “bishops’ wickedness” that drove her out of the Church, Greene said, and her own refusal to “submit the spiritual and physical livelihood of my children to these monsters.”
Greene, who is sometimes referred to as “MTG” (à la “AOC”), went on to say what many faithful Catholics who haven’t left the Church have nevertheless lamented for years: “The tragedy is that America is full of pious, churchgoing Catholics and kind, brilliant priests. There are even a few good bishops.”
“The faithful deserve better pastoral leadership, and bishops who don’t smear and punish good priests for being ‘too Catholic.’”
A number of orthodox American priests have indeed been censured, suspended, or targeted by their bishops for actions such as blogging about the clerical sex abuse crisis and ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick (Father Mark White, Richmond, Virginia); criticizing LGBT “pride” (Father Paul Kalchik, Chicago); refusing to defy Church teaching and give Communion to a Buddhist lesbian (Father Marcel Guarnizo, Washington, D.C.); speaking against and personally refusing to receive an abortion-tainted experimental coronavirus vaccine linked to millions of reported adverse events and at least thousands of deaths in the U.S. alone (Father Peter Williams, Vermont); merely offering or defending the Traditional Latin Mass; or criticizing the Democrat Party and Catholic hierarchy (Father James Altman, Wisconsin).
Meanwhile, most U.S. bishops have largely avoided commenting on whether pro-abortion Catholic politicians such as the current president ought to be given Holy Communion in defiance of canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law; cracking down on rampant liturgical abuse; or meaningful action to address the dismal state of catechesis among American Catholics, almost seven in 10 of whom reject the authoritative Church teaching that the Eucharist is the literal body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ and the majority of whom reject Church teaching on abortion, divorce, and contraception.
Greene isn’t “afraid of the U.S. Catholic bishops, who nod and smile and offer infanticide advocate Joe Biden the Body and Blood of Christ. They can’t take anything from her that they haven’t already stolen,” summarized John Zmirak at The Stream. “Her trust in the church where she grew up, got married, and wanted to raise her children — all that is gone. Gone not just for Taylor Greene, but for four out of ten native-born U.S. Catholics. That is the percentage of homegrown U.S. Catholics who leave the church and never return, according to Pew Research.”
“The bishops are also busy destroying our nation using taxpayer money to advocate for the illegal invasion across our borders,” Greene continued, a point she and Voris touched on during their initial interview. The two also discussed motherhood (“I think being a mother is the best part of my life”), the liberal media’s hatred of her, abortion, economic decline, and much more.
‘Come home’
“Mrs. Greene’s statement about leaving the Church is as enlightening as it is saddening,” commented Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute. “She left the Church because of scandals caused by wicked priests and bishops. Our Blessed Lord said ‘woe to him through whom [scandals] come.’”
“The weight of MTG’s departure from the Catholic faith rests completely upon the heads of the bishops and priests by whom she was scandalized,” Hichborn told LifeSiteNews. “On the other hand, to MTG I would offer St. Peter’s words to Our Lord who asked if they would also leave after He announced His flesh and blood as true food and drink: ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.’”
“MTG, there is no salvation without baptism, there is no forgiveness of sins without Confession, there is no life without the Eucharist, there are no sacraments without the priesthood, and there is no priesthood without the Church. Despite the scandals caused by wicked clerics, the validity of the sacraments remains, so – where can you possibly go for the sacraments except for the Catholic Church? Does one jump from a ship at sea because of the scandals caused by members of the crew? Come home and help us fight the mutiny and restore the beauty and glory that truly belongs to Holy Mother Church!”
‘You are letting false shepherds rob you of your salvation’
In an open letter, Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, who leads the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope, implored Greene to return to the Church for the sake of her own soul.
“You are letting false shepherds rob you of your salvation,” she told the congresswoman.
“It is not ‘men’ who run the Church; it is Our Lord. Why He allows such sin and devastation to afflict His sheep, He alone knows,” Mother Miriam said. “It was so in the Old Testament when God in Christ warned His shepherds that they will be destroyed because of their abuse and neglect of the sheep having left them to wander without shepherds (Ezekiel 34).”
Mother Miriam’s full open letter to Marjorie Taylor Greene is below:
Dear Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,
I am responding to your heart-breaking response to Bill Donahue. Heart-breaking, not because your description of matters in the Church is incorrect, even if incomplete, but because your solution to such error and sin is to leave Jesus for the Judases in the Church.
You have not only lost your power to speak, since you have left the very Church our Savior established on earth; you have not only turned from His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, but you have put yourself in danger of losing your very salvation if you do not repent and return.
It is not “men” who run the Church; it is Our Lord. Why He allows such sin and devastation to afflict His sheep, He alone knows. It was so in the Old Testament when God in Christ warned His shepherds that they will be destroyed because of their abuse and neglect of the sheep having left them to wander without shepherds (Ezekiel 34).
A faithful Catholic and apologist of the last century, Frank Sheed, made this utterly true comment: “The Church is the cause of the holiness of its members, but its holiness is not measure by their response.”
Why do I say that you are the one who needs to repent and return to the Church? Because you are letting false shepherds rob you of your salvation. To leave Christ after the graces you have been given is the greatest sin of all.
Mother Miriam