Posted on 07/28/2006 5:30:29 PM PDT by Pyro7480
Please do not use potty language or references to potty language on the Religion Forum.
This guy was, after all, taken down; just like a number of televangelists have been , after they received sufficent exposure. You seem to have missed one point: the parish is rich, and he felt entitled to live as well as they. If he could skim this much money off the top, what must be the income of the parish? He is like many accountants in the same circumstance, and he has the soul of an embezzler. You want to take away the pastor's control over the funds? Well, someone has to be responsible, and a lay trustee is just as likely to have the same sense of entilement, and if sufficently clever, to pull the wool over the eyes of his fellows. You don't want reform, you want to wreck the whole Catholic Church.
Hi, would you mind giving that warning to poster Rightonline in post #3?
To: Pyro7480
To my Catholic brethren......who all too often love to take potshots at we Evangelicals............WTF is WRONG with your church???????????????
3 posted on 07/28/2006 8:32:38 PM EDT by RightOnline
Thanks!
Brings to mind televangelists Hinn and Crouch.
Sin tempts all, and we can see by the amount of sin and crime in this world, the threat of eternal damnation doesn't mean all that much at times. There should be control and auditing in place, along with transparency of finances, in every church regardless of denomination. All contain Men, and Men do sin, regardless of stature in life. My parish is blessed to have some very holy men as priests.
I didn't see anyone trying to protect this man. Yes - he is a criminal and a sinner, and I'll bet an unrepentant one. However, as you can see ... based on the action of this man, a downpour of condemnation against the Church follows. It gets tiresome, and we get defensive.
Absolutely disgusting! Another Bishop falls down on the job, and it takes private citizens to bring this homo-pig-priest to some sort of justice.
And the parishioners are still out over a million bucks!
Not to be cavalier, but they probably could afford it. Probably they would have more forgiving of his homosexuality and his (probable) heterdoxy.
To be cynical, he was a wolf among wolves.
It is hard not to be cynical about these thieving priests and the Bishops who enable them.
***We at least don't have televangelists.***
So what if they bilk people on TV or take money out of the offering tray? Same behavior.
I wonder whether John the Baptist became a little fed up of living on locusts and wild honey and popped out of the desert once in a while to pig out at Finkelstein's deli?
Or whether Jesus tired of his 40 day fast in the desert and said to Satan when he came to tempt him...."Psssst......run into town and bring me back a matzos-burger......with mustard and extra onion..........."
Can you say "self-indulgence" Father, you pampered shirt-lifter.
The difference is that the televangelist is selling soap--I mean an image--, and not to anyone he can physically touch. The priest is betraying those who call him Father and as the image of Christ, often in spite of how he appears. The first of these is simply a bad deal that only a fool would buy into; the last is a tragedy. He has taken what is true and made it a lie, not the betrayal of fans but of his family.
WOW..this guy is worse than PS!
Well, you're right. If he's just a diocesan priest and not belonging to a particular order, then he didn't have to take a vow of poverty. But then again, this wasn't his money, so he's a thief anyway.
Nobody here is, but that's not the point. What we usually see (and I hear from my family) when this stuff happens is "yeah, but the Protestants are bad, too". It is just like when Hannity or O'Reilly have a Dem on and this banter ensues:
O'Reilly: "Isn't it true that Bill Clinton failed at _____" and the Dem pundit replies, "Well, the real problem is the Bush administration _____".
This is the tiresome part. The Catholic church has a huge problem. It is very hard to take it seriously when it makes judgments regarding confilcts and policies while its own eye is the center of beam-hood. did you miss the part about the parishoners having to hire a PI because the bishop didn't do anything?
No, I think this guy's boss is complicit. Certainly he has been skimming for a long time and nobody ever reviewed the books.
You don't want reform, you want to wreck the whole Catholic Church.
The Catholic church is going to survive until the end of the age. It has the potential to do a whole lot of good, but it cannot be taken seriously as long as things like this pop up so darned often. I wish Catholics, my family included, would get a little self respect and start acting like Christians first.
I don't want to speak to doctrine here, just practicality. Can you imagine how disgusted the Connecticut Catholics who took the host from this man's hand must feel?
What do you mean by "come out and just simply condemn this stuff and leave it at that"?
It was a broad statement not pointed at you in particular. It bugs me when these scandals hit and Catholics say that Protestants do bad stuff, too. It is not relevant. The Catholic church has a really big problem with corruption and the moral relativism gets on my nerves.
...of course we're going to stand up for our teachings, and stand up for our Church. We're not going to let these monsters lead us to spiritual despair and/or suicide. The Church has lasted 2,000 years, and there have been periods like this before, where many of the clergy have been just plain wicked. But you know what? The Church is still around, and that demonstrates that something else is sustaining her.
Again, for me, this ain't about doctrine. Some use these scandals to promote women clergy and such, but that is crass - Jersey Girl crass. This is about being a Christian. This ain't about ancient history, either. The Catholic church is cranking out disgusting scandals at an incredible rate that implicate people in the highest places and you folks won't do anything about it. That's a crying shame.
You didn't.
What I don't care for is Protestants acting like you guys never have the same problems we do.
I'm not a Protestant. These problems only crop up in churches where the clergy have too much power.
He has been doing what many a rich man's servant does. The rich man in this case is the parish elite, who evidentally did not think Father's highliving to be out of line. They don't expect priests to be saints because they don't expect to be saints themselves.
The" clergy" have "too much power" in every church, because the "laity" are content to let a handful of people do all the work. The same rule applies in politics as well.
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