Posted on 08/17/2018 10:08:11 AM PDT by Salvation
Yes they do. Side note if you will: working with the teens and young adults the last few months they don’t seem to be following this issue closely. They are more involved in their relationship with Jesus and the Church. Just an observation. God bless.
I converted through RCIA at St. Ann Parish in Coppell during that time. Back then, St. Ann was a growing parish of about 1000 families. It was launched by Msgr. Killian Broderick about ten years before that, with about 400 families.
There were no grey areas with Msgr. Broderick, and he would occasionally speak truth to power in his homilies. It wasn't until after his death that I read of the true story behind the friction between our parish and the diocese.
Killian testified for the plaintiffs in the Kos trial. Kos had sought out his guidance outside the confessional, and Killian felt honor bound to testify, which must have infuriated Bishop Grahmann. The lingering hostility delayed breaking ground on our new church by at least five years.
The results of Msgr. Broderick's leadership are self-evident: St. Ann Parish is now the 6th largest parish in the United States, with about 8000 families registered.
Our "two adult" policy is strictly enforced, i.e. two adults must be present whenever children are present. Seems simple, but it's very effective.
There was one night when I was teaching last year when I was the only one of six teachers present that night. We solved that by combining both classes, bringing in one of the staff to assist me. It was a special night for me, as the lesson for the night was "agape love". I departed from the curriculum, and used a section of Fr. Robert Spitzer's book "Healing the Culture".
I must have appeared to be really fired up that night, 30+ 6 graders were quiet for over 30 minutes, and their questions demonstrated that they were interested in the topic, and paying close attention.
It was nothing like Fr. Spitzer's presentations, who appears regularly on EWTN. I know him well: he graduated two years ahead of me at Gonzaga, and served as President of GU during the early 2000s. His leadership helped to launch a rebirth at Gonzaga, aided by the success of our basketball team. Over the past 20 years, enrollment has grown from 2000 undergrads to nearly 6000.
The homosexual incidents increased rapidly in the late 1960s and peaked in the early 1980’s.
The John Jay study showed 504 incidents were reported to have occurred in 1980. 29 were reported to have occurred in 2002. Since that time the number of incidents has further declined.
Less than 5% of Catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse of any kind including touching over clothes.
It is estimated that approximately 10% of Catholic priests are homosexual. Some say it is more. No one knows the exact number.
The Pennsylvania AG report shows a network of homosexual priests working together to sexually abuse teenagers and working together to protect each other.
When Saint John Paul II became pope he inherited an American Catholic church that had been infiltrated with corruption. The network of homosexual priests were part of this corruption. Though he was resisted, he worked to get rid of homosexuals and abusers.
The incidents declined rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s.
The American Bishops protected homosexuals. They ignored and tried to silence faithful Catholics who reported homosexual priests.
The report has gone back 70 years and tried to identify all accusations. Most of the priests accused in the report are either no longer priests or are dead.
I have always been angry about the homosexual network of priests and those who protected them and allowed them to abuse others.
But I am tired of the media blaming all priests.
“No, I’m not implying that anybody was worshipping the devil”
I think some probably were. Menstrual blood and urine are not ingested just because they are icky. They do have strong ties to ritual magicks.
Well the Eastern Rite Catholics (Middle East) can in fact marry. As for your other excellent questions, let’s see if others have inputs. God bless.
I have SiriusXM Radio in my car and on my clock radio. I listen to EWTN (Station 130) morning and evening. This scandal is pretty much all that’s being talked about, and Michael Lichens’ article here sums up most of their discussion points fairly well.
He’s a graduate of Gonzaga which is a Catholic University.
AMEN!!! Thank you!
And I’m sorry I’m unable to provide info on the origin of celibacy. Celibacy makes sense to me so I don’t really care who, what, where or when it was instituted. But I can understand the desire to know.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1579 - 1599.
Also, it should be known that, scholars have surmised that, should the Western Church open up marriage for priests, it would only be made available to candidates. In other words, the Church would manage this change by permitting married men to be ordained, not allowing already ordained priests to marry.
The problem has been one of formation. This has been done very poorly in the last 40 years. The so-called “sexual revolution” has not helped.
I ought to know; I was a seminarian in the late 60s/early 70s, and saw what happened in the “Spirit of Vatican II”.
What needs to be done now:
Every diocese and religious order needs to implement an affirmative program to screen out vocations applicants with a history of deep-seated same-sex attraction—and certainly those who have engaged in homosexual activity. Applicants should *not* be allowed to apply for the seminary unless they are already able to live as habitually chaste single men, without recurring falls into unchastity. Candidates in seminaries who act out sexually should be dismissed - period. This policy is not homophobic in any way. It is simply non-hypocritical: The Church has to cultivate vocations of men who live and practice what the Church professes.
The Church in the West had to wage a protracted struggle against secular power. Bishops and abbots owned estates, whose income constituted the main support of the Church, but as owners of land in the realm, there were constantly pressured to become mere vassals to the king and way too enmeshed with the political nobility. (Look up “Investiture Controversy” and you will see that reforming popes struggled AGAINST this for centuries.)
If a bishop had sons and daughters, he’d be even more deeply caught up in dynastic marriage politics: marrying this daughter to that duke, and this son to that princess, and forming alliances with powerful families for all the political/economic/social benefits that would accrue.
Trying to secure the independence of bishops from the temporal Powers-That-Be was a huge job. It took a millennium to settle and it’s not what I’d call “settled” even yet. But, for many centuries in the history of the Church, marriages would have forced priests and, even more so, bishops and abbots, to become even more deeply enmeshed in securing titles of nobility, access to estates and lands, royal alliances and the rest of it for all their children.
The Church was trying to steer clear of that whole web of worldly entanglements. Celibacy --- the avoidance of ongoing dynastic interconnections --- was THE honorable way to secure independence from worldly preoccupations and temporal power, and hence more freedom to be "in this world but not of it."
This has --- I should say primarily --- the value of "eschatological witness," which means they were dramatically demonstrating that they expected to receive full recompense by having the entire Christian community as their family in this world, and eternal life in the next. Check out Mark 10:28-30 (Link).
It was (and is) the most powerful of motivations to be able to follow the example of St.Paul and of Jesus Himself, in trading earthly for heavenly priorities.
Sometimes people wrongly think of deacons as laymen, but this is incorrect. Deacons receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders and are clergy under the Bishop, not just added-value laymen assisting the pastor.
Our deacons --- and their wives --- are real treasures. I can hardly imagine how the parish could function without them.
EWTN's Teresa Tomeo is married to a Deacon. She is a syndicated Catholic talk show host, author of numerous books, and an international speaker.
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