Posted on 07/01/2009 1:23:56 PM PDT by Balt
Sam Miller is a prominent Cleavland businessman. He is also Jewish. His essay was sent to me by a friend who didn't give any information about where he found it.
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Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta on one of the most important institutions that we have today in the United States, namely the Catholic Church?
Do you know—the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it's free.
The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 700,000 students. The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people—not just Catholics—in the United States today.
But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country. They have blamed the disease of pedophilia on the Catholic Church, which is as irresponsible as blaming adultery on the institution of marriage. Let me give you some figures that you as Catholics should know and remember. For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church; 41.8% of clergywomen reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen have been sexually harassed. Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic problem.
A study of American priests showed that most are happy in the priesthood and find it even better than they had expected, and that most, if given the choice, would choose to be priests again in face of all this obnoxious PR the church has been receiving.
The Catholic Church is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. The agony that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church. You have been hurt by a small number of wayward priests that have probably been totally weeded out by now.
Walk with your shoulders high and your head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States. Then remember what Jeremiah said: "Stand by the roads, and look and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is and walk in it, and find rest for your souls." Be proud to speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what your Church does for all other religions. Be proud that you're a Catholic.
by Sam Miller
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As to Mr. Miller's original question, your PP has his own theory about why the journos are out to stick it to the Church: orgasms. The supposed right to unrestricted sexual gratification in any way and with anyone one chooses explains everything. According to the Church, marriage is forever; sex is for the married only, and has as it's primary purpose the transmission of human life, and is available to two people of the opposite sex by God's design; and any diliberately persued sexual gratification outside of the married covenant, with oneself or another, is a disorder, as is any sexual gratification which excludes the possibility of the transmission of human life. How dare the Church tell me how to live! As one recent commercial for one of those penis enlargement pills recently stated: "Why would you want to compromise on one of the most important parts of life?" Why, indeed? As everyone knows, without a big penis that performs on demand, life just isn't worth living, is it? Pancriatic cancer kills more people than AIDS, but is entitled to only a fraction of the money spent to cure it because—obviously—no form of cancer is contracted by the persuit of orgasms, mankind's most basic human right.
So, if you can catch a Catholic priest—who has dedicated his life so completely to a cause outside of himself to the extent that he sacrifices the comforts of family life and the gratification of his sexual desires—with his pants down, that's big news! It validates every nasty thing we've ever thought about Catholics: they're evil because they want to deny me my orgasms! And we can prove it because 1.7% of those weird priests abused a kid. The fact that nearly ten times that many married ministers of other faiths have been caught falling to the same moral weaknesses is not news because the other faiths—for the most part—don't care how or where I get my orgasms.
As long as the Catholic Church refuses to acknowledge that orgasm is a basic human right, it will always be evil; and anti-Catholicism will always be the last acceptable bigotry of the enlightened intellectual.
Do you know—the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it’s free.
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But it seems that the Catholic Chuirch get better returns for their education dollars than the US government...
Ping
There is something to this but it goes beyond leftist, MSM, etc. It’s just about everywhere. Even many Catholics treated me as a sort of freak because, as a monk, I pursued a life of chastity. I got the impression that, for many of them, it was harder for them to personally understand and identify with chastity than it was to understand homosexuality. Gay men at least had sex lives and I seemed to refuse to have even that much in common with them. Over sexualization is everywhere.
The percentage of pedophiles in the priesthood roughly equals the percentage of them in the general population.
That's never really been the point. The point was the lengths that the church hierarchy went to cover it up and the willingness to shift these pervert priests around rather than deal with the problem in a forthright manner.
Chastity at certain points in one’s life is understandable and often commendable. But indeed, lifelong chastity commitments made early in one’s life are quire hard (impossible in fact) for me and many others to understand.
I spent 34 years of my life without sex. I thought I was called to be a nun, but I was called to me a mom.
Even dating, sex was out of the question.
I would talk to you at those parties!
Chastity before you get married is understandable. Making a commitment when you’re 20 years old to live a life of chastity and never get married is something I can’t understand. Not only are you saying that you don’t want to get married currently, but that you never, ever will want to. That’s not something that anyone can be sure of at a young age if you ask me.
*grin* Thank you. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the conversation. But from what you’ve shared about your story I’m also sure that you understand what I’m talking about - not being as sexually charged can make you a bit of an outsider.
Perhaps the best way to counter the MSM is to label it as silly. Any other form of retort seems, at least in its collective mindset, to be misperceived as legitimizing its sewage as ‘journalism’.
You are right on the money TomOn. You should see the looks I get when I tell young men I work with to stop living with their girlfriends, or be a man about it and honor her with a committed marriage. They bounce from partner to partner, and I have to warn them the human heart was not meant to be broken again and again. It does terrible damage in the long run, but I’m swimming against the current, because the culture is shouting at them that sex is free, and has no repercussions. These things I speak of from my own experience too...sadly.
He answered, "Not all can accept [this] word, but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it." Matt 19:11-12
More info:
http://fratres.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/if-i-were-an-protestant-minister-sam-millers-numbers-wrong/
Tell me about it, Tom. When I was teaching high school some years ago, one of my students was genuinely surprised when I told him that we didn't accept homosexuals into the seminary. He actually thought that celibacy required that you didn't like girls to be accepted. No joke.
No argument here. But Mr. Miller still has a point inasmuch as many people, encourged by the media, have come to believe that it's that "weird celibacy thing" that's at the heart of the problem.
I can definitely see many advantages to that choice of life. On the negative, you forgo having a wife and children. On the positive, you forgo having a wife and children.
Can I start over and be an old maid with catz?
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