@Fr Matthew P Schneider LC Father, further to my comment earlier about the Priest who refused to baptize the Jewish husband of my Catholic friend, saying that it sufficed before God that he was Jewish (!)...

This example, along with yours of the Deacon of the Catholic Church discouraging a dying woman from having recourse to Confession, can be multiplied by thousands in number and in even greater gravity.....

It is for this reason that thinking, serious, and informed Catholics who witness such things time and time again, who read heterodox documents which cause confusion about the most fundamental truths of the Faith coming out of the Vatican since Vatican II, no longer trust our pastors, our Bishops or even our Pope -- the present Pontiff contributing more than any other preceding Pope to widespread confusion about the most basic moral laws, even the Ten Commandments.

Catholics who fear God more than man will look rather to 2,000 years of unchanging doctrine, not "modernist adaptations" on such matters as using murdered babies for research and why something as immaterial as "time" -- which doesn't matter one iota in God's sight concerning this crime -- can never suffice to remedy or set aside the disproportionately grave abomination of extracting fresh organs from murdered babies for research....especially when virtually 99% of anyone who gets the illness recovers without these diabolically derived vaccines.

As a Priest, you should rather be gratified to see Catholics who wish to preserve delicacy of conscience in the face of such assaults on the moral law and the Faith itself....unspeakable outrages before God.

Please stop trying to induce Catholics to set such strength of conscience aside. We don't consider these modernist concessions to such atrocities to be "formative" and don't want them.

What is even more tragic is a Catholic friend of ours was married for many years to a fine Jewish man of wonderful character -- very endearing and very "English". And when the wife had asked their local Diocesan (Novus Ordo) Pastor about having him baptized, the Pastor told her he didn't need to be baptized, as he was Jewish, and that sufficed before God....!!!!!

Thus, with a wave of the hand, this Catholic Priest dismissed the entire bedrock founded on Christ's Redemption, Baptism and the Sacraments, the Life of Grace in the soul, etc.

The husband also had some unfortunate mistaken ideas about the Catholic Church being implicated in the Holocaust......so Baptism seemed to loom as a virtual impossibility, even as he grew into his older years.

Fortunately, I began visiting the house regularly for a study group on spiritual texts. Being more of a newcomer to the scene...a new face....I was able to bypass some established road blocks and began talking to the husband and answering some of his questions, soon teasing him about receiving Baptism at an upcoming event in our FSSP Parish.

Lo and behold....! He began to warm to the idea and one day agreed to be baptized by the FSSP Priest at our parish on that occasion. By this time, he had reached a ripe old age.

What is absolutely beautiful is that as we all stood at the Baptismal font awaiting for the Baptism to begin, the husband nicely dressed in his suit, he suddenly said with a note of inspiration... "I want to wear something white..."

As Providence would have it, his wife was wearing an oversized WHITE sweater shawl. We immediately put it on him, and he looked like a venerable Rabbi wearing a large Prayer Shawl at the moment he was baptized.

From that day on, he began to receive Holy Communion with his wife at Mass.

This wonderful man died not too long afterward.....fresh in the grace of Baptism. Surely he went straight to Heaven....

What if that first Priest's dismissal had never led to an alternate path.....? Tragic....

Deo Gratias....!

Was the woman actually meaning she wanted to confess to the Deacon or was she asking for a priest? If so, and the Deacon discouraged her instead of going immediately for a priest, then he certainly was wrong. If, though, he was pointing out that only a priest can absolve, then he was clearly in the right. Surely to goodness every priest, including Fr Schneider, would know? Perhaps you would clarify, Father? Thank you.