And then you will understand why people have left the Catholic Church in the first place. A friend and I were talking over the weekend about whether we know any practicing Catholics who are also really holy people. We couldn’t think of any off the top of our head. We could think of devout Jewish friends and Christian Evangelical friends who were good ambassadors to their faiths. But the devout Catholics we know tend to come off preachy and judgmental.
The priests are even worse. I never met one who I would feel comfortable going to if I was having a crisis. When I was growing up, the priests were not warm and cuddly figures. And you always felt judged and condemend around them. (And I am only 31 years old so this was the 1990s.). Even more recently, the local pastor at my Church couldn’t even bother to talk with my father when my grandmother died. He was too busy. My dad still goes to Mass regularly but my grandpa is currently on hospice and I doubt he would go to his local priest again. The same crabby priests are still there; the joke with my parents is that they haven’t gotten the memo from upper management yet.