I know several diocesan priests who have family money and who go off on hunting trips or fishing trips or golf resort trips. I'm sure you do as well. I also know someone who knows a very, very orthodox priest (nationally well known) who loves expensive dinners in fine restaurants accompanied by bottles of expensive wine. I'm never sure what to think of this. Was just thinking too, that one of the FR posters personally knows a very orthodox bishop here in the US who keeps a personal temp controlled wine cellar full of expensive wines.
There are plenty of sick people in hospitals who need the sacraments brought to them during the summers. Men who prefer fun & leisure over sacramental work, need not apply to the Catholic priesthood. The beach houses that are owned by clergy should be sold and the funds should go back to the church to be used for scholarships for needs students or to pay the legal fees for the butt sex rape cases. We have to be brutally honest on these things. Being a Catholic priest is not "Spring Break."
That's "gay" behavior, Colleen. The "priests" that are constantly chasing after lavish dinner parties, dining outings, who collect designer sweaters, etc., these are the fruitcakes. Who is PAYING for all of that stuff anyway? They have CLOSED parishes in Boston and New York because queer priests RAPED young teenage boys. No more expense accounts and Platinum AmEx cards for priests.
The residence of the archbishop of Hartford when Archbishop John F. Whealon was appointed and arrived from Erie, Pennsylvania was a Hartford mansion more luxurious than the Governors' mansion. That was not a credit to the Church. Archbishop Whealon would not live in the mansion but sold it to the LaSalette Order and moved into a nursing home for retired nuns in West Hartford. There, he occupied a modest two rooms and personally said Mass for the nuns and served as their confessor and spiritual advisor.
He had two suits of clerical clothing to his name---one threadbare for every day use and one relatively new for special occasions. He gave us the feeling that he was in the tenches with us and that he did not feel a need to expend diocesan funds on personal luxuries. In fact, he donated much of his salary to things like pro-life groups.
He died suddenly of heart defibrillation on an operating table during routine kidney shunt maintenance surgery and has been dead for about fourteen years now. Please pray for the repose of the soul of a good, holy, humble, modest and faithful Catholic archbishop who set a wonderful example for others. Those of us who loved him miss him very much.
Please tell me it's not Fr. Corapi!