[Iscool]

But requirements like those are impossible to enforce, and they are plainly ignored. In Rome’s medieval quarter of Trastevere not far from Le Mani In Pasta, the International Ecclesiastic Seminary attracts men from all over the world who want to study for the priesthood in the heart of Rome. A professor there, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his job, says the vast majority of the young men who come to study are sexually active gay men who quickly become part of the lively gay culture in Rome. Not all the priests are gay or practicing, he concedes, but in recent years he says he has noticed that most new students are young men with a certain sexual slant, and he fears that the institution has a reputation for attracting only gay seminarians.

And how many of these queer recruits were coached as altar boys by other queer priests??? What a creepy organization...

[MrChips]

Before you condemn that “organization,” consider its size, its endurance, and the fact that is it the largest giver of charity, by far, in the world. A wayward seminary here or there does not invalidate the integrity of so many others, such as the huge bastions of dedicated postulants I have seen for myaelf in Catholic Poland. The Church is a very large house.

[AnalogReigns]

Nothing new. Several years before the “95 Theses” in the early 1500s, Martin Luther was sent to Rome as part of an official delegation from his monastery. Rome, by which I mean the part of the city affiliated with the Vatican, was a cesspool even (or especially) then—500 years ago.

A pope at the time had taken Aquinas’ advice on allowing prostitution literally—and was running houses of prostitutes especially for priests. Of course at that time indulgences and relics were huge money makers too...(Michelangelo—in that exact time period—was paid with indulgence money, actually).

Concerned Christians have ALWAYS wanted to be reformers...but usually stifled by the system.