Our Lord is the Good Shepherd and is the model of His priests who are good shepherds.  Our Lord contrasts the selflessness of a good shepherd-priest, with a hireling-priest.  Here are Our Lord’s words:

I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.  But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth; and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep; and the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling, and he hath no care for the sheep.[1] 

A hireling puts his own safety and self-interest before the good of his flock.  He withdraws from his flock in times of fear and trial.

When times are easy and peaceful, it is hard to distinguish hireling-priests from good shepherd-priests.  The proof that a particular priest is a hireling comes during times of fear and trial.  Here is how Pope St. Gregory the Great, Doctor of the Church, explains this truth:

Whether he [viz., a priest] is a shepherd or a hireling cannot be truly known unless a time of trial arise.  For as a rule, in times of peace, both shepherd and hireling alike remain watching their flocks.  It is only when the wolf comes that each one shows the purpose for which he has been standing guard over his flock.[2]

In any tribulation – whether a religious persecution or a plague – a priest has a duty to continue administering to souls.  Although a hireling withdraws from the flock, a true shepherd continues to tend the flock.

There are only two circumstances in which a priest may withdraw from his flock:

➢  when he is in special danger not shared by other good priests who remain to give good care to that flock; or

➢  when the priest can take his entire flock with him to safety and administer to their souls in that safe place.

Here is how St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, teaches this truth:

Let the servants of Christ, the ministers of His Word, and of His sacraments, flee from city to city whenever one of them is especially sought for by persecutors; but so that the Church is not abandoned by those who are not thus pursued.  But when the danger is common to all, that is, to bishops and clergy and to the laity, let those who need the help of others be not abandoned by those whose help they need.  Therefore, either let all pass over to a place of safety, or else let those who must of necessity remain be not abandoned by those through whom their need for the rites of the Church are to be fulfilled.

The ministers of the Church, therefore, must then fly, under pressure of persecution, from those places in which we dwell when there is either no people of Christ there to whom we must minister, or when the needed ministry can be fulfilled by others who have not the same reason for flight. But when the people remain, and the ministers take to flight, and their ministry is withdrawn, what then have we but that condemnable flight of hirelings who have no care for the sheep.[3]

So, when the people remain in any tribulation – whether a religious persecution or a plague – only a hireling abandons them and withdraws his spiritual care. 

Fear for his personal safety is the hallmark of a hireling-priest.  He “seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth” for his own safety.[4]  In this time of coronavirus, the two main fears of a hireling-priest are:

1.    He fears the government threats if he continues caring for his flock instead of “sheltering in place”; and

2.    He fears the coronavirus itself.

Below we will examine each of the hireling’s fears.

1. A priest who is a true shepherd continues caring for his flock even when threatened by the government for doing so.

Our godless civil governments have ordered priests to “lock down” and to “shelter in place” and to not go out to attend to the souls of their flocks.[5]  These godless governments assert that religion is not an “essential service” for the people and that, for the (supposed) “good of the people”, priests must not attend to their flocks.

It has happened many times in the history of the Catholic Church that the civil government ordered priests not to attend to their flocks.  A true shepherd would never submit to those evil commands.  In contrast to true shepherds, hirelings submit out of their own self-interest.

In Mexico, in the early 20^th Century, when the godless, anti-Catholic, Masonic government ordered priests not to administer to their flocks, many hireling-priests fled to the United States, following the example of their hireling-bishops.  Many of the remaining priests in Mexico abandoned their flocks, married, and settled in the cities.[6]  However, here is what happened to the good shepherd-priests:

A courageous minority of priests refused to compromise.  They went into hiding and roamed Mexico at night, in disguise, doing their best to bring the True Faith and the Sacraments to the faithful.  If caught, they were arrested, fined, jailed, and sometimes tortured and executed.  In February 1915 alone, the Mexican government martyred 160 priests.[7]

Those were faithful shepherds indeed!  They imitated Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, Who laid down His Life for His sheep.  Those priests rejected the civil government’s order telling them to withdraw from their flocks “for the good of the people”.

Saints John and Paul are models for our time, showing the danger of the civil authority stifling the Church’s work by “little steps”.

Saints John and Paul (who are mentioned in the Canon of the Mass) are special models for our time.  They were martyred in 363 A.D., under the Emperor Julian the Apostate, because they would not compromise with the civil authority’s restrictions on the Catholic Church’s work spreading the true religion and saving souls.

The Roman Emperor, Julian the Apostate, attempted to stifle the Catholic religion by placing restrictions on Catholics teaching the youth.[8]  These restrictions were much more perilous to the Church than the preceding bloody persecutions under Nero and Diocletian because of the danger that Catholics would acquiesce to these limits on the work of the Catholic Church (whereas there was no danger Catholics would acquiesce in the government’s bloody persecution and martyrdom of Catholics).  Dom Guéranger explains that “never was Holy Church menaced with greater peril”.[9]

Dom Guéranger explains that during the previous persecutions, Catholics went to martyrdom with unmixed nobility.  Because of this, the civil government changed its strategy and instead attempted to destroy the Church through “small” compromises to slowly snuff out Her life.  Dom Guéranger continues:

[The civil government sought to] now make a slave of her [viz., the Church] whom they had beheld still holding her royal liberty in the face of executioners – fain would they [viz., the persecutors] now await the moment when, once enslaved, she would at last disappear of herself, in powerlessness and degradation.[10]

However, the bishops of the time were true shepherds, not hirelings that went along with the civil government stifling the Church in a “bloodless” weakening.  Dom Guéranger continues the account:

[T]he bishops of that time found vent for their indignant soul, in accents such as their predecessors had spared to princes whose brute violence was then inundating the empire with Christian blood.  They now retorted upon the tyrant, scorn for scorn; and the manifestations of contempt that consequently came showering in, from every quarter upon the crowned fool [viz., Julian], completely unmasked at last his feigned moderation [viz., his not putting Catholics to death].  Julian was now shown up as nothing but a common persecutor of the usual kind – blood flowed; the Church was rescued.[11]

In other words, Dom Guéranger explains that the Church was in great danger from the slow stifling of Her life by the civil authorities.  She was rescued by the renewed bloody persecutions and martyrdoms.  Dear readers, beware!  We are now undergoing this same slow snuffing out the Catholic religion!  Bloody persecution would be much less dangerous!

Dom Guéranger continues his account of Saints John and Paul, writing that cowardly Catholics would doubtlessly think that the best course would be to accept “small” compromises and “small” limitations on the Catholic Church’s care for souls.  Below, Dom Guéranger provides an imitation of the soothing words of cowardly Catholics who would advise accepting restrictions which are “prudent” compromises with the civil government. 

Here is Dom Guéranger’s warning, which imitates the cowards, trying to justify compromise:

[Julian the Apostate did not require] the renouncing of Jesus Christ, [as] a condition [for peace]. Well then, it may be retorted [viz., by weak compromisers], why not yield to the Imperial whim?  Could they [viz., Saints John and Paul] not do so without wounding their conscience?  Surely too much stiffness would be rather calculated to ill–dispose the prince [viz., Julian], perhaps even fatally.  Whereas to listen to him would very likely have a soothing effect upon him; nay, possibly even bring him round to relax somewhat of those administrative trammels, unfortunately imposed upon the Church by his prejudiced government.  Yea, for aught one knew, the possible conversion of his soul, the return of so many of the misled who had followed him in his fall, might be the result!  Should not such things as these deserve some consideration – should they not impose, as a duty, some gentle handling?[12]

Dom Guéranger is warning us that this is a temptation of the devil under the appearance of good!  Dom Guéranger acknowledges that, if Saints John and Paul would have gone along with the government’s limitations on the Church, some people would have found a way to “justify” their compromise.  Here are Dom Guéranger’s words:

[T]he most exacting casuist[13] could not find it a crime for John and Paul to dwell in a court, where nothing was demanded of them contrary to the divine precepts.[14]

But true Soldiers of Christ are not compromisers!  Saints John and Paul openly opposed this stifling of the Catholic Faith and were gloriously martyred. 

Dom Guéranger warns his readers that, in our modern age, the civil authorities are again seeking to stifle the Catholic Church through slow suppression.  Here is his warning given through the means of a prayer addressing those two martyrs themselves:

Now-a-days there has arisen a persecution not dissimilar to that in which you gained the crown; Julian’s plan of action is once more in vogue ….[15]

In the present world, we see the tactics of Julian the Apostate again being used, in the civil governments’ ordering the priests to “lock down” and cease administering to their flock.  Only hireling–priests would submit to that order.

St. Edmund Campion, a good shepherd who firmly resolved to administer to his flock against the civil government’s command

About 1580, St. Edmund Campion, a Catholic priest, firmly declared his determination to continue administering to souls in Elizabethan England, despite the government’s order to Catholic priests to not attend to souls.  Here is St. Edmund Campion’s courageous response to the civil government’s order:

Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm [viz., England], my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course [viz., his administering to souls].

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance [imprisonment], I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships [i.e., England’s ruling council] to give it your reading, to know my cause.  This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labor.  For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession.  …

Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven [in prayer] for you daily by those English students [in Catholic seminaries on the continent], whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over [i.e., give up on the rulers’ conversion], but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes [weapons].  And touching our Society [of Jesus], be it known to you that we have made a league – all the Jesuits in the world – whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England – cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery [to the Catholic Faith], while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn [a place of execution], or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons.  The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood.  So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.[16]

St. Edmund Campion was a true shepherd!  He did not withdraw from his flock even though the civil government told him that the Catholic religion is not an “essential service”!  Instead, this faithful shepherd courageously tells the civil authorities that nothing will stop him from attending to his flock until they catch him and kill him.

What a contrast this true shepherd is to the corona-cowards who withdraw from their flocks because the civil government ordered them to “shelter in place”!  For example, in April 2020, the French (so-called) bishops spinelessly said they were “regretting” the civil government’s order that “Catholic worship will be obliged to wait three weeks longer than stores, businesses, and public transport in order to take place publicly.”[17]

Where are the true shepherds?  Not there!  These are hirelings![18]

As St. Augustine teaches:

[W]hen the people remain [in need], and the ministers take to flight [or stay home to “shelter in place”], and their ministry is withdrawn, what then have we but that condemnable flight of hirelings who have no care for the sheep.[19]

Summary of this section

Good shepherd–priests continue administering to their flocks and do not abandon them even when the government orders a “lock down”.  By contrast, hireling–priests “shelter in place” for fear of the government.

2. A priest who is a true shepherd continues caring for this flock even during a plague.

Although hireling–priests “shelter in place”, good shepherd–priests stay with their flocks in times of plague.

For example, when the plague struck Milan, here is what St. Charles Borromeo did:

He visited the plague–stricken with unwearied zeal, assisted them with fatherly affection, and, administering to them with his own hands the Sacraments of the Church, singularly consoled them.[20]

St. Charles Borromeo and St. Aloysius Gonzaga both died attending victims of the plague.[21] 

When the plague was raging in Rome, Saint Joseph Calasanctius joined St. Camillus, and not content in his ardent zeal, with bestowing lavish care upon the sick poor, he even carried the dead to the grave on his own shoulders.[22]

When the plague struck Valencia, here is what St. Louis Bertrand did:

The plague that decimated the inhabitants of Valencia and the vicinity in 1557, afforded the saint [viz., St. Louis Bertrand] an excellent opportunity for the exercise of his charity and zeal.  Tirelessly, he ministered to the spiritual and physical needs of the afflicted.  With the tenderness and devotion of a mother, he nursed the sick.  The dead he prepared for burial and interred with his own hands.[23]

When the plague struck Switzerland, here is what St. Francis de Sales did:

Though the plague raged violently at Thonon [Switzerland], this did not hinder [St.] Francis [de Sales] either by day or night from assisting the sick in their last moments; and God preserved him from the contagion, which seized and swept off several of his fellow-laborers.  …  In a plague which raged there [viz., Annecy, Switzerland], he daily exposed his own life to assist his flock.[24]

When the plague struck Wales, here is what St. Theliau did:

When the yellow plague depopulated Wales, he exerted his courage and charity with a heroic intrepidity.  Providence preserved his life for the sake of others ….[25]

There are countless other examples of good shepherd–priests faithfully attending their flocks during a plague.  This is their duty – to assist their flock during a plague (and always).  A good shepherd–priest’s selfless devotion to his flock compels the admiration even of non-Catholics.  For example, here is how one protestant admired the religious priests of Manila during the plague there:

Of undaunted courage, they have ever been to the front when calamities threatened their flocks.  In epidemics of plague and cholera they have not been dismayed, nor have they ever in such cases abandoned their flocks ….[26]

Summary of this section

Good shepherd–priests continue administering to their flocks and do not cower for fear of the plague.  By contrast, hireling–priests “shelter in place” and withdraw from administering to their flocks.

In times of plague the prayers should be public.

The Catholic Church has always known what Pope Francis now denies, viz., that plagues are a just punishment of God for sin.[27]  In times of plague, the Catholic Church redoubles Her public prayers.  By contrast, the conciliar church and hirelings “lock down” and stay home.

When the plague ravaged Rome, this is what Pope St. Gregory the Great did:

[T]he plague continued to rage at Rome with great violence; and, while the people waited for the emperor’s answer, St. Gregory took occasion from their calamities to exhort them to repentance.  Having made them a pathetic [very moving] sermon on that subject, he appointed a solemn litany, or procession, in seven companies, with a priest at the head of each, who were to march from different churches, and all to meet in that of St. Mary Major; singing Kyrie Eleison as they went along the streets.  During this procession there died in one hour’s time fourscore [i.e., eighty people] of those who assisted at it.  But St. Gregory did not forbear to exhort the people, and to pray till such time as the distemper ceased.[28]

But as [St.] Gregory was passing over the bridge of St. Peter’s, a heavenly vision consoled them [viz., the people] in the midst of their litanies.  The archangel Michael was seen over the tomb of Hadrian, sheathing his flaming sword in token that the pestilence was to cease.  [Saint] Gregory heard the angelic antiphon from heavenly voices – Regina Coeli, lætare, and added himself the concluding verse – Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.[29]

How great was St. Gregory’s Faith compared to modern hirelings!  In April 2020, Cardinal Cupich of Chicago blasphemously scoffed at the power of prayer to help with the Coronavirus.  He said “religion is not magic where we just say prayers and think things are going to change.”[30]

Hireling–priests stay home.  They don’t see the importance of public prayer and penance in the time of plague because they are men of little faith.  But good shepherds are the opposite! 

When the plague struck Milan, here is what St. Charles Borromeo did:

[T]he plague appeared in Milan.  [Saint] Charles was at Lodi, at the funeral of the bishop.  He at once returned, and inspired confidence in all.  He was convinced that the plague was sent as a chastisement for sin ….[31]

[H]e ordered public supplications to be made, and himself walked in the processions, with a rope round his neck, his feet bare and bleeding from the stones, and carrying a cross; and thus offering himself as a victim for the sins of the people, he endeavored to turn away the anger of God.[32]

There is no end to the other examples we could give of the Catholic Church praying and processing publicly during times of plague.  Such a Catholic response, though, requires firm Faith.  Hireling-priests “shelter in place” and agree with Cardinal Cupich that “religion is not magic where we just say [public] prayers and think things are going to change.”[33] 

Hireling-priests are like Ohio’s (so-called) “bishops” who cowardly canceled all services because of fears that large gatherings could spread the coronavirus.[34]

Conclusion of this article

Hireling-priests cower at home when the government orders them to “shelter in place”.  Hireling–priests flee from coronavirus to save their own skin.  Good shepherd-priests stay with their flocks despite persecutions from the government or the danger from plague.[35]