“Children are far safer with priests than with the average person.”
That seems so very obvious and I’m not even Catholic.
I think the telling thing about this statement is not so much the praise for the priest in the relationship, but the comparison of where the ‘average person’ falls on the ‘pervert-ometer’. As a culture we have collectively so devalued human life for so long that we no longer really value children or their little lives compared to how we used to perceive them.
I for one, only through the Grace of God, delight to see and be around children. I love to hold them and play with them. Children make me happy. Infants and toddlers make me delighted. One of my colleagues has a little nephew, a toddler now. Every once in a while her sister brings the little guy in when she visits. The last time he came in, we were in a conference room at the start of a meeting. I saw him cming around the end of the table and I pushed back in my chair and told him to ‘come over here and give me a kissy’, he walked right over with his little arms outstretched and I scooped him up and put him on my knee and kissed him on the cheek. I bounced him; tickled him and talked to him for quite a while and I didn’t see or hear anything but him during that time but the room was full of people. He made my day, maybe my week.
Mother Teresa once said, ‘saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers’.
I weep and pray for our culture and for our world.
Lord Jesus Christ, save us from ourselves...