No, it is not you .. The left in the Media have an agenda where the Catholic Church is concerned. The pro-abortion folks want to discredit the church .. the NOW gals want women to become priest .. along with other issues.
Val is right .. there are pedophiles teaching in public schools but yet you never hear about that .. there are no out cry from the media or the public to clean up the teachers in the public schools. ... Hello Union Leaders
The NOW gals want women Priest .. and some want Priests to be allowed to marry .. But what they fail to notice is that these Priests are in majority of the cases were abusing boys and not girls .. which now can also mean it is also a gay problem. Gay priests are the big secret that for years no one wanted to discuss ... and yes I have heard the stories over the years about it.
But I will say whether they are gay or straight .. it comes down to the vow of celibacy that these priests make to God and to the church .. and if they can't make that vow then they should not be priests .. about the closest thing I can compare this to is like a vow a man and women make when then get married .. they vow to honor each other and not cheat on each other ... if the couple cannot keep that vow .. they have no business getting married .. I know that abuses against children can't be compared to that .. but that is the closets thing I can think of .
Prentice is right in the fact that this will not bring down the church and we will survive this .. Because in the end it is the faith that Catholic's rely on and our belief and love for God and his son
But Swervie is also right that this will also become a big financial hit on the church .. I don't know if it will go as far as bankruptcy. but it can and will cause a big financial hit and yes there will be all kinds of people coming out of the woodwork claiming they were abused just so they can cash in. And like everything else in this country .. the true victims of these abuses will end up being hurt again.
I don't claim to be a great catholic and know everything .. many here on FR are much better catholic's then I and have much more knowlege then I .. but a post I once read seemed to make sense and that maybe this was God's way of cleaning house.
These abuses of children is a huge problem and cannot be tolerated or even covered up. They need to be exposed and some how make right what what was wronged.
I hope all that made some kind of sense .. I tend to ramble at times ...
And see Swervie .. I don't always disagree with you .. does this mean I lose my gold star .. lol .. SMOOCH
There is also the mentality that says that because priests are frequently in the position of counseling people on marriage and sexual issues, that they are likely to be more effective if it is something they know something about personally. This is generally true regardning most issues of life. Of course I am aware that those who embrace celibacy do so with the idea that the one who has a wife is concerned with the things of the world and how to please his wife whereas one who is celibate is not distracted by the things of the world and is therefore more concerned with the things of God and how to please Him. While this is a scriptural "definition" I think it important to recognize that it was Paul's idea of a godly life and while Paul was a powerful voice for God, he seems to have had a problem with women. Peter, on the other hand, who is proclaimed by the church as the first "father" or pope and for whom the church in Rome is named, WAS married.
Either way you look at it, it was not Jesus who taught celibacy. There is a fundamental difference between the Roman Catholic church and other Christian churches which I believe is at the root of this issue. The RC church holds the word of the pope as co-equal with the scriptures and a sort of ongoing source of revelation. Other churches hold that the revealed word of God is the final word, and while priests and ministers and other spiritual leaders have a place in the life of the church, no man has authority equal to that of God and "woe to any who would add to or take away from" God's word.
Many would say that Jesus Himself was celibate and that is true, but when you consider that God's people, which would later come to be called His church, was betrothed to Christ as a bride, then marriage in the traditional sense for Jesus would have made Him unfaithful to His commitment. The scriptures tell men to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Christ was in every way a fulfillment of the scriptures and while He was in all ways like us except that He was without sin, in ways of the flesh He was set apart from us as well that the scriptures might be fulfilled.