Posted on 05/24/2009 3:26:18 AM PDT by MartinaMisc
'I would like to have a family and at the same time serve God."
By all accounts, the man who recently spoke those words is more than capable of doing both. The Rev. Alberto Cutié, a 40-year-old Roman Catholic priest, built a devoted international following through his service as pastor of the St. Francis de Sales parish in Miami Beach, his immensely popular Spanish-language radio and television ministry, and his widely distributed advice column. "Father Oprah," he was nicknamed, both for his gifts as a broadcaster and his empathy for the struggles so many face when it comes to love, sex, and relationships.
Such struggles, it turns out, were of more than just academic interest to the telegenic priest. Cutié's career imploded this month after a magazine published photos showing him kissing and embracing a brunette on the beach. In the uproar that ensued, Cutié admitted that he and the woman were in love, and that for nearly a year he had been struggling to resolve his feelings for her with his commitment to the church. The Archdiocese of Miami had little choice but to suspend him from his parish and media duties, and Cutié is now faced with an agonizing decision. Does he leave the priestly vocation that means so much to him and for which he has shown such flair? Or does he break with the woman he loves and yearns to share his life with?
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Please look up the concepts of reaction formation and displacement. I suspect many young men choose a celibat priesthood to try to smother inpulses they have in their sub conscious. That can happen in other religions too but at least other religions have men who are in touch with their sexuality (and desire families) going into official callings.
It was routinely ignored, which is why Hildrebrand required total celibacy. It had turned into something of an open joke. And not only among parish priests. Even among the major orders ordained men lived with their wives.
I don't understand why this is so difficult for Catholics. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ROUTINELY ORDAINS MARRIED MEN. And I mean really married. Men who have wives with whom they have normal marital relations. These men are Catholics.
We have married Catholic clergy as it is. It would be a simple step to make this the norm throughout the Church.
Would that be a wise move in our present circumstances? It seems to me that the answer is very obviously that it would be. Let's face it - most of the American Catholic clergy is gay, very often openly so. If you meet a Catholic priest you should assume he's gay until proven otherwise. Very often, and based on my very considerable experience, they'll go out of their way to rub your nose in their "lifestyle choice.
Having a predominantly gay clergy puts families in a bad situation. First, as I said, the parish "father" looks and acts usually like a "mother" or actually more like a problematic dowager aunt. And of course homosexuals being what they are, it leads to the routine molestation of boys. But since they're mostly gay and we laymen are overwhelmingly heterosexual, the Catholic clergy winds up feeling more like a persecuted minority that pits itself against us despised heterosexuals. Far too many Catholic priests see themselves as a sort of Special Operations Bureau of the broader Gay Liberation Movement. We saw this again and again as gay Bishops covered up for gay priests who indulged their boy-lover compulsions.
Gay activity among the American Catholic clergy wasn't - and still isn't - discouraged, much less in fact condemned. It is rather celebrated and even REQUIRED in most American seminaries. If you're not gay in most American seminaries, or at the very least a heterosexual who is perceived to be sympathetic to their dilemma - then you won't get ordained.
We Catholics need to look at this and accept it. This is a terrible truth, and we resist it. But it's the way it is. The problem is deep-rooted and can only be extirpated by radical measures. Heterosexuals must oust the homosexuals from the entire clergy - starting with the parish rectories - and defrock any actively homosexual priest.
The only way we can accomplish that is to un-do Hildebrand's right-for-the-time rule and make the Roman Catholic Eastern Rite rule of married parish priests the norm throughout the Western Rite.
And the celibacy rule doesn't just encourage gay men to seek Holy Orders. The American clergy seems to have become something of a dumping ground for social and emotional misfits of all kinds. Judging from my very extensive experience, if a Catholic priest isn't gay he almost always suffers from some other serious emotion disorder that renders him incapable of playing the role of "father" to a parish family.
C'mon, my fellow long-suffering Catholics, you know this is true.
We have a life-threatening problem because we can't seem to get our minds around the fact that we're not living in the Middle Ages and that we are, like it or not, competing for the same pool of young, healthy and idealistic young men as every other employer.
Viewed strictly from a management perspective, the current policy is very bad HR. Just disastrous HR policy. Remember that, frothy appeals to the lofty, all-giving celibate vocation notwithstanding - the modern world presents far many more opportunities for financial and social advancement to intelligent and ambitious young men than the military, the royal bureaucracy and the Church. In order to compete in the competition for talent in the world in which we actually live the Church will have to radically change its HR policy. It will have to offer prime candidates the chance at a normal family life and a measure of affluence. And that means we laymen would actually have to pay for the solidly middle class status of a priest and probably his large family. And when we get right down to it, that's what we don't want. We want our sacraments on the cheap. But nothing is free in this fallen old world of ours. We pay for the costs upfront by supporting a priest and his family in a measure of comfort, or we pay on the back end with a clergy that mostly fears and often loathes normal families and all too often presents a terrible threat to the physical safety and spiritual well being of our children. And not to mention the multi-billion dollar judgments against so many of our diocese.
Gen. 1-28 Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth...
I have yet to meet an openly gay priest, or even one who is effeminate. I have met meek, humble men, ones not given to loud, brash talk. Being meek and humble of heart may seem to some to be “gay”. I contend they are christlike, and I do not find them to be girl like. I am not sure where you attend Mass, but since there are many places that I would not consider going to Mass( San Fransico being one I could see this being a problem) I have yet to encounter it. My son is off to seminary next fall. He is meek, humble and soft spoken. He is a sensitive warm loving young man. He has the gift of tears, and quietly and lovingly spreads the word of God in his specially ordained way. He is quite attracted to girls, not boys, but also understands that everyone has to crucify the flesh, each just in the way they were called. His is within the vow of celibacy, mine and others are within the vow of marriage. You cannot have adulterous sex, pornography, birth control, abortion, or deviant sex within the confines of marriage; it is a discipline. You cannot have sex in celibacy; it is a discipline. your chastity is offered up to God on both accounts, just in different ways. It is only questioned by people who are unwilling to discipline themselves, and then project their failings on others, who through their own FREE WILL become Eunichs for the kingdom BY CHOICE. I guess it should not be so surprising that so many call for its end in such a selfish, undisciplined, all about me world. I pray it never changes!
I hope you’re right. I’ve only known one priest well. I shouldn’t explain exactly how because he can no longer defend himself. I believe he was homosexual and I believe he had aids. He died in a one automobile car crash.
I hope what I’ve heard about seminaries is not true.
It is true, in some seminaries. It is not true in all. There are deviants in every career, religion, and place and always will be. It is the duty of the people to root them out, expose them and fix their own locations. Don’t sh#) where you sleep, and don’t allow anyone else to either!
Those who have serious problems with clerical celibacy tend to reject the call to chastity entirely, for all areas of life.
All unmarried people are called to celibacy, for as long as they remain unmarried, and that means no fornication, no pornography, no masturbation, no sodomy. All married people are called to chastity: no adultery, no contraception, no sodomy, no pornography, no masturbation etc. Is all of this easy? Of course not - but that is the call to the rightly-ordered use of our sexual faculties. Are many people going to sin? Highly probable, but that doesn’t redefine “rightly-ordered”; it just means that our desires and behaviors are often disordered.
bada bing, bada boom. :)
I’m reading “Veritatis Splendor” again - it inclines one to *categorical* thinking ;-).
Well, as they say you can't begin to solve a problem until you've admitted that you have it. We must be living in parallel universes. I have met very few American priests who weren't gay or deeply confused in some other way.
I'm originally from Wisconsin, now living in California. The priest at the little parish I grew up in is tres gay. He has a "very special friend" that he goes on all sorts of little outings with. One of the priests in another parish I was involved with in Wisconsin will spend the rest of his life in prison for serial molestation of boys. I have had friends and family who were molested by priests. One of the priests who knew my nephew (I'm not sure whether he actually molested my nephew, could have been the co-pastor) is on the lamb someplace as the secular authorities are looking for him on other child molestation charges. That man preached from the pulpit that homosexuality was natural, normal and good. He wrote his doctoral thesis on debunking St. Paul's condemnation of homosexual acts.
I myself spent a couple of years in a seminary in the 1970s and I can tell you the priests and seminarians were nearly all gay or in some other way deeply emotionally twisted. Every heterosexual man that I knew back then left the seminary. I can't remember any heterosexual being ordained. They were essentially all gay. Not all of them were unchaste, but many were. But nearly all of them had same sex attraction disorder.
That's my experience. I guess you have a different take on things and that's fine with me.
But the fact that we're paying out billions in civil claims for massive homosexual misconduct by the clergy would lend itself more to my take on the reality of the situation, would it not?
I would add that the fact (which I think is rather apparent to most) that the American clergy is overwhelmingly homosexual would tend strongly to discourage normal young men from entering the seminary. Who, after all, would want to have their good name associated with a calling that is associated forever in the public mind with the worst kind of perversion?
It's not required, and the Church never said that it was. It's not mandated, it's merely part of the discipline the Church chose for historical reasons to place on most who seek holy orders. But the fact is that the Roman Catholic Church always has allowed some priests to be married. As I said above, Eastern Rite Catholics are as Catholic as the Pope and their priests are married.
That said, there's no question that the celibate vocation is very much ordained by Scripture.
St. Paul makes it clear that the celibate vocation is a higher estate than marriage:
Corinthians 7
1Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband . . . 7 For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
St. John makes it clear that celibate priests will have a special glory in Heaven:
Revelation 14
1And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. 2And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: 3And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.
There are many more scriptures, including what Jesus said about the few who would make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom, but I think it's clear enough. Marriage is a noble calling, celibacy is better. But celibacy is a gift given to a few. Requiring this discipline of rank and file priests has proven to be a disastrous, deeply mistaken policy.
And maybe it's even unscriptural - I'll leave that to others more versed than I to debate. But I would point out that St. Paul required that bishops and deacons (which are I think closest to our notion of priests) be married. Note that they COULD NOT be celibate:
1 Timothy 3:2 (King James Version) 2A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
1 Timothy 3:12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
ones who want to take back their church. It does sound like you came from a twisted parish. I sadly do admit that they are out there; birds of a feather and all that. However, I have yet to meet a gay priest personally and I have yet to attend a parish that is preaching homosexuality from the pulpit. I have attended some who were more lax, (not doctrinally, but in practices with their music or some such other things) but I have belonged to parishes in NJ, SC and FL and I have yet to meet or know of a priest involved in any such thing. We have had a bishop replaced for this a while back( for not reporting someone, but I am not sure if it was a priest or someone else involved in a ministry) and we do have a heterosexual priest scandal right now (fr Cutie). We also had an embezzlement issue by a priest a few years back in our diocese.
I do not doubt you had these issues happen, and I know they have happened in other places. I just don’t think it is as widespread and rampant as you think. I am sure it is rampant in localized dioceses, and you sound like you found a couple of them. While I deplore it, and it MUST be routed out, I just cannot paint it with the rampant broad brush that a person who was stuck in the middle of it might want to do. It would be like being the person inside a tornado, while someone in another state looks on.
Tornadoes are fierce and frightening and life changing when you are in the path of one, but most people are never in the path of one. While we must do everything possible to protect people who are in the path of them, and help them recover from being hit with one, most people are not ever hit by a tornado. We recoil in horror when they are, and do all we can to fix it but it does not make the rest of the country a bad place. perspective is important here, and while I cannot imagine the horror you have been through, we are doing what we can to root it out and help those who have been affected.
I do not know the overall number of persons who have brought a case against the Church for sexual abuse, so I am unable to put this in number form, but for having almost 100,000,000 catholics in this country, I would venture that it was not nearly even a tenth of that(I vaguely remember hearing something like 650 cases but could be way off). The cases that settled were for huge numbers, and rightly so. While one case is too many, I am still waiting for the outrage from the public on teachers abusing children, little league coaches, boy scout leaders, and their own parents, family friends,etc.
I am not excusing, I am pointing out deviants in all walks of life exist and it is a bit of a farce to not point this out. YOUR personal experience is with the Church, therefore your anger is justifiably directed at it. For the many of us who have not been abused, it is not any different who or what institution or affiliation is doing the abuse, it is ALL wrong. Teachers, boy scout leaders, other clergy, little league coaches, parents, family members are all the same to us; people in positions of power or trust over children who take advantage of it and abuse.
It is not to diminish your experience, but to acknowledge it occurs everywhere, not just within the Church. This would give us a warped view of one institution( justifiably if that is where you were harmed) instead of recognizing it is all deplorable.
I will pray for you, and your family. Those who have harmed you will meet their Maker and receive their justice, either in this life or the next. Nobody gets out without it. I am sending a young man to seminary who loves this Church and his God more than life itself. He will work with all he has to change what wrongs he sees. There are dozens in the seminary he is planning to attend who feel the same. God will not let the gates of hell prevail against His Church, on this you can rely.
We can only choose one of two ways, to be part of the problem or part of the solution. I have chosen the latter, as I hope you have. Most are not burying their heads in the sand, most have been asleep and are waking up. Look around you at the changes just in the last couple of years. American Catholics, and Americans in general for that matter, have been on auto pilot too long thinking good would flourish if good men said nothing instead of evil. I am hopeful that this lesson has been learned and the results will be a stronger, faithful Church and country.
God bless you and keep you. May His healing hand touch your heart and strengthen you for your journey.
Some people's marriages are heart-rending; some married people fall in love with somebody else, all inadvertently, stunned and surprised by it, and can go through seasons which are full of renunciation and pain. Many single people, too ---whatever their orientation, I mean all --- find that trying to live chastely can be harrowing. And recovering from the hot confusion of a fall from grace, even moreso.
All I can say is, let us pray for this priest. And for the woman he's gotten entangled with, too. Poor suffering people! But the suffering can bring them to the right place, to God's heart, where there is peace.
I fear that you have not yet comprehended fully the depth of the rot, and the radical measures required to right the situation. We need to remove homosexuals from the clergy altogether. The only way we can hope to achieve that is to require that parish priests be "the husband of one wife."
IMHO.
You are more than welcome my FRiend. I am just failing to make the connection between married priests and sexual abuse. 8 to 1 married men commit more sexual abuse than celibate priests. I think the FLDS has more married men molesting children as do muslims (both marry children as young as 12, and at least from reports from former members the FLDS men regularly abuse their own children). I fail to see the connection in the same way you do. All areas of the population suffer from this horrible issue and you are correct to say we must root it out. Married priests will not do it, it will just shift the demographic, as evidenced in the many married clergy and other married folks who abuse children.
The child sexual abuse problem in our Church is overwhelmingly one of homosexual men having sexual relations with pubescent boys. This isn't to say that other populations don't have their problems - they do. I'm just saying that homosexual men having sex with boys is OUR PROBLEM. That's the one we have to fix. It does no good to point to the problems of others. This won't fix our problem - which is an overwhelmingly gay clergy either having sex with boys or actively covering up for those that do.
Requiring priests to be married would effectively exclude homosexuals from the priesthood. This would largely solve our current problem. That isn't to say we won't have other problems, but the problems associated with an overwhelmingly gay Catholic clergy - homosexual men molesting boys being the most salient of them - won't be one of them.
You mention FLDS did not have "marriage" in the Christian sense. Warren Jeffs wasn't "married". Actually, instituting real Christian marriage would solve the FLDS problem, maybe they should try it, too.
I see the point you are driving at. Don’t count on it working. Many gay men marry to hide the fact that they are gay. There are also always unintended consequences. If, as I stated, that married men molest at a higher rate, you would just be exchanging one form of abuse for another. The problem is a chastity problem. That occurs in both married and non married people. Again, married clergy abuse at a higher rate than celibate. Someone posted a link on here to just some of the cases. It does not fix the problem, only makes a different target.
This is misleading. The various writings that we consider "the bible" were, just like the oral traditions, a part of the Church before that council. That council merely put a stamp of approval on what had been the practice of many Churches until then.
A better way of describing it is the Church recognized what God had appointed as scripture.
You’re so considerate, Mrs. Don-o!
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