The Good Catholic's Response to Bad Priests

Bucks County Courier Times ^ | 4/3/02 | Claudio R. Salvucci

[Poohbah]

I see that you are going to be ordained a permanent deacon soon. Please know that my wife and I will be lifting you up in prayer, that your ministry may be effective in bringing in the lost sheep and helping the found sheep to stay on track.

[ThomasMore]

Please know that my wife and I will be lifting you up in prayer

I am very grateful and will do the same for both of you. It has not been an easy road. I have taken flak from heterdoxy on both the left and the right. But I know God's grace is sufficient.

[saradippity]

I did the Google search on married Latin Rite Roman Catholic priests.They are converts who received a dispensation from Rome.I believe most were Anglican, Episcopalian or Lutheran. There are 90 of them. I alwo read,I believe in FIRST THINGS,that there were 100.So its probably reasonable to say there are between 90 and 105.105 married priests out of 48,000,3 of them in Fort Worth and I know one out here in Arizona.When the time is right it should be easy to do a survey;however,currently with all the heat and attention it would not be fair to even ask them.

[FITZ]

We have married priests in the Church today: Anglican converts,

I used to be against the idea of married priests but the Eastern Orthodox seem to do okay with them. I believe that the way they do it is they allow married men to become priests but priests don't marry ---so you wouldn't have your parish priest dating.

[saradippity]

Can you tell me what diocese you are in? Does your diocese have quite a few vocations given what we know about the paucity of vocations in most diocese?

[sinkspur]

Sinkspur,everytime I find one of your posts I end up thinking about points I really hadn't thought about before.The end result is that I become more convinced that relaxing the celibacy rules would be to court even more disasters.

Really? When your access to the sacraments is limited due to the lack of priests, or your parish is closed to pay off the victims of pederasts, you'll re-think your objection to married priests.

We've got married priests today, and they're doing an outstanding job.

The clerical culture has to be broken, and married priests are the only way to do it. Otherwise, you'lll continue to have these guys covering for each other.

[sinkspur]

I am finishing up my studies this year in pastoral ministries and will be ordained a permanent deacon this October.

I envy you, and will be lifting you up in prayer.

I was ordained a deacon in 1976, but left the seminary to get married.

I've explored returning with my bishop, but there is simply no vehicle within the Church to return a laicized deacon to the ministry.

You will make a wonderful minister of the Gospel.

[pax_et_bonum]

sinkspur,

Even though I have only one brain cell, as you so cleverly pointed out a while back, I must disagree with you about the necessity of having married priests.

There is one terribly important point which has not been discussed and which I believe is critical to understanding the celibate priesthood. It is the spiritual/mystical life of prayer and relationship with God which must be active and healthy in order for a priest to live his vocation, whether married or single. This gives him the strength to resist temptations, whatever they happen to be. (It is this which gives all of us the strength to resist temptations and to live our vocations faithfully, priests or not.)

It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken. How many marriages have been destroyed because the husband-wife relationship was not nurtured, became distant and cold, and then someone 'better' came along? It is the same for the priest-God relationship.

How many of us who have been married for any length of time have not been attracted to someone else? The fact that we are married does not stop temptations from happening. The strength of our marriage relationship, and our relationship with God, are the sources of strength for fighting such an attraction.

pax

[Antoninus]

Do you really believe that they will root out homosexuals?

Yes.

It appears they will stall and try to buy more time.

Indeed some will. But the tares will eventually be taken out and burned, one way or another. It is a sin that cries out to Heaven for justice.

Can't you hear the media frenzy if they start culling out homosexuals?!?!

Yes and I don't care. And neither should bishops who are not wholly focused on this life. Let the media rail, so long as justice is done.

[PGalt]

Good exchange bump.

[sinkspur]

I grant all your points about the necessity of prayer and a deep personal relationship with God.

The FACT is, there are not many men called to celibacy. Some have shoe-horned themselves into the priesthood because they wanted to please their mothers, or they had sexual problems and wanted to suborn them, or they thought they could secure their salvation by being a priest, no matter what their other inclinations were.

I'm not saying that a married priesthood would eliminate problems. No, it would create new ones.

But we cannot have criminals in the priesthood, and bishops who cover for them. If you, like me, believe we ought to weed homosexuals out of seminaries, the only real way to do that is to recruit men from the ranks of the truly heterosexual.

It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken.

A deep relationship with a woman is what I was missing when I was in the seminary. The sex, as you say, was secondary.

Many priests are simply lonely for the love of a woman. You can't substitute dogs, or other men, or even God.

How many of us who have been married for any length of time have not been attracted to someone else?

Well, I can tell you, that in 26 years of marriage, I have never been seriously tempted by another woman because I have NEVER allowed myself to be put into a situation where I would be alone with somebody else. I know what my limitations are.

I disagree with you, but I appreciate your thoughtful post.

[Antoninus]

How often does ANY priest go out at 3AM to administer the last rights.

See post 111. Thanks, saradippity. A celibate priest is able to dedicate his entire existence to serving Christ's people on Earth. The same can not be said for a married minister, no matter how personally holy he is or how well his wife and children understand that they come second in his life.

[Shethink13]

You chose to answer only ONE of my arguments...what about the others.

I have eagerly scanned all replies and have yet to see sinkspur address your excellent points about married priests(all of which I have thought of as well).

The bottom line, a man who would only consider the priesthood on condition that he be allowed to marry does not have the Church as his number one priority.

[pax_et_bonum]

"It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken.

A deep relationship with a woman is what I was missing when I was in the seminary. The sex, as you say, was secondary.

Many priests are simply lonely for the love of a woman. You can't substitute dogs, or other men, or even God."

Thank you for such a nice response.

If you were missing a deep relationship with a woman, it seems that you weren't called to celibacy.

However, if God is calling a person to celibacy, He absolutely can substitute for any need which that person has.

There have been many, fulfilled, celibate people in the history of our Church. And they have claimed to be happy. I also know several priests who are deeply spiritual and happily celibate.

[sinkspur]

There have been many, fulfilled, celibate people in the history of our Church.

There don't seem to be very many now. And we must have the sacraments to remain the People of God.

Whether those sacraments come from married or celibate priests is of very little concern to most Catholics.

[Antoninus]

I think he likes women who are meek and submissive and Mother Theresa types.

If I remember my Beatitudes, meekness is a virtue in men and women.

He was very cold to the Pakistani woman from the UN who visited him in the Vatican, according to a biographer ... The woman described telling him about how terrible some of the rules about birth control and abortion affected some catholic women in cultures where women have no equal rights whatsoever. She described his eyes as turning steely cold and assumed it was because few people dared to challenge him, especially women.

My eyes grow steely cold just reading this. The woman in question was an ambassador for the Culture of Death. The Pope reacted exactly as he should have when such an emissary of Satan entered his presence. Birth control and abortion are condemned by the Church for very legitimate reasons. These reasons should become all the more clear to people as science sans ethics continues to create new grotesqueries by playing god with human sexuality.

She got the message.

Probably not. I'll bet she's a member of 'Catholics for Free Choice.'

[Antoninus]

Why are Catholics who even entertain the thought of married priesthood treated like lepers?

Well, simply because, as this article says, you are exactly wrong. You aim to fix the problem by relaxing rules. From what I've read of Catholic reform movements throughout the history of the Church, the vast majority of them moved forward with a reaffirmation of vows, or a reimposition of disciplines, not a relaxation.

We've gone through the biggest relaxation of Church discipline in history over the past 40 years (particularly in this country and Europe) and what do we have to show for it? Declining vocations and a massive scandal. You don't think the two are related? The solutions offered by the 'no celibacy' boosters seem like more of the same poison that has already wrought such terrible damage. I say enough is enough!

[pax_et_bonum]

"There have been many, fulfilled, celibate people in the history of our Church.

There don't seem to be very many now. And we must have the sacraments to remain the People of God.

Whether those sacraments come from married or celibate priests is of very little concern to most Catholics."

I agree with you on both points.

I do think, however, that the example of a person who gives himself (or herself) entirely to God is one which is tremendously beneficial as a powerful testimony to all of the good which the Church represents. If the Creator Himself isn't enough to fulfill the lives of a few of the men who He created, then what percentage of our lives is He worth?

[Aliska]

no i think she is ,usli,: ,y keyboqrd is fried so i guess thqt ends ,y pqrticipqtion for qzhile i donùt knoz hoz she got qn qudience zith the pope:

[Antoninus]

Assuming that homosexuality is the radical cause of ephebophilia and rooting the homosexuals out of the clergy will get rid of the problem, how does one propose doing this, short of hooking up all of our priests and seminarians to peter meters...

There's no need to go there. It must become widely known that homosexuals will not be tolerated in the priesthood. The impetus from this can come from the very top and the grass roots. The grass roots applies pressure at the local level - praying, fasting, writing letters, making sure their priests and bishops know that homosexual behavior of any kind WILL NOT be tolerated. It's already been demonstrated that active homosexual and ephebophile priests will resign if their activities are made public. It may become necessary for the laity to investigate suspicious behavior themselves, compile evidence, report it first to the bishop but if no action is taken, to the media.

From the top, the Vatican must start weeding out those bishops who have protected the ephebophiles and homosexuals. Only orthodox bishops with a proven record of success in removing homosexuals from the ranks should be promoted henceforth.

This strategy will take years to implement and be successful. I want to cry when I think that we could be over a decade into the process if action had been taken when the first major whiff of these scandals surfaced in the late 1980s.