Is the Catholic Priesthood and Outdated Institution?  

June 20, 2002

The Catholic priesthood is not doomed to become outdated, but in light of recent scandals within the Catholic Church, the priesthood may, from this day forward, never totally recover.

What went wrong?

I have researched an enormous amount of material on the matter and I can assure you if the priesthood is disciplined in proportion to the pain and suffering of the sexually abused victims of priests, the priesthood would become wounded almost beyond healing.

Dioceses from Boston to Los Angeles have disclosed their dirty secrets to the public and to prosecutors and have exposed priests involved in sexual abuse. Many were subjects of hidden court settlements that were sealed, which is strategy used by corporations who lose the trust of the public because the organization knew and covered the improprieties.

This writer believes God gives warnings over and over for misconduct to be changed and for willful disobedience to be rectified, confessed and repented of. When His warnings are ignored, He then exposes publicly the hypocritical wrongdoing of those who profess to uphold His standards.

The Catholic Church has been exposed.

Investigative journalist, Michael Rose, interviewed more than 150 priests, seminarians, and others and has disclosed the truth of the radical liberal subculture in the Catholic Church in his book “Goodbye, Good Men”. He reveals how liberals inside the Church encouraged and promoted non-celibate homosexual priests, while at the same time drove orthodox Catholic seminarians out of the priesthood as too “conservative” and “judgmental”. In other words, while pedophiles and rapacious homosexual priests were being tolerated within the walls of the institutional Catholic Church and Catholic seminaries, the doctrine of the Church was being trodden under foot.

The church has now adopted a “no-tolerance” position on child sexual abuse and molestation. The nation wholeheartedly agrees. But faith in the integrity of the Catholic Church is being severely tested. Unless the Church can produce priests who are men of integrity in their private lives and role models for Christian leadership, the Catholic priesthood may indeed become an “outdated” institution.

Considering all the reports of the molestation of boys in the Catholic Church, I can’t help but think of the unmerciful persecution the Boy Scouts have endured. However, it would be impossible to estimate how many little boys may have been protected by their moral and godly stand.

A truth emerges from the ashes of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that has existed within the Catholic Church for decades. That truth is: “…if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
(Mark 4:25)