[Catholic Caucus] No Vatican II Nostalgia: Young Clergy Rejects Francis

The Austin Institute has found that younger Catholic priests and priests ordained in the US in recent years tend to be significantly more Catholic than older clergy (Wsj.com, 18 December).

The priests commented on Catholic teachings such as the sinfulness of contraception, masturbation, homosexual acts and suicide, the invalidity of women's ordination and the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation.

Priests ordained in 2010 or later are the most faithful of all - and the least happy about Francis, who is still nostalgic for the decadence of the 1960s. About half (!) of the priests disapprove of him.

Avoid the slippery slope...

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.

You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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