[Fee]

Check First Timothy, Chapter 3, which lists the qualifications for head of church. Ministers must be "blameless" (i.e beyond reproach) and "husband of one wife" (original Greek text is explicit, men only). Ministers have to be leaders by example. Hard to teach a young person to shun the gay lifestyle if you are a former gay person. Reason, the young person can say you tried it and somehow you found your way back to straight. I am young, let me experiment and if God is right, I will make it back just like you did. The same problem can arise as the minister is trying to urge a couple not to divorce and give their marriage a chance, hard to do it if he was divorced. I know it sounds pretty tough, but a minister serves a very important position in the church. The Catholic Church is suffering because they became emeshed in worldly standards. Power political members of their church can support abortion, divorce, philander and even be gay, and they are accomodated because strict enforcement of their doctrine would lead to problems with the real world. Standards have been compromised and have slid to the point that the fear of the world was more prominent than prosecuting priests who molest alter boys. I think one of the problems with the US Catholic Church is their Seminaries allow "former" gay men to become priests in order to make up their priest shortages. They compromised on scripture to deal with real world problems. Consequences is homosexual child molestation (Note most of the offense involves men on young teenage boys. If celibacy was causing sexual tension, most of the offense would have been men attacking young women). Finally, when I was young I thought like you. Why follow the scripture strictly? The church must be flexible so they can survive. As I get older, I find that the scripture has much wisdom. In depth study of the commentaries you will find that they were written for a purpose. Straying from them will cause problems. The Church is not a building and infrastucture, it is about the spiritual relationship with God thru faith, obedience and prayer. If we compromise scripture for membership and larger buildings, we will end up like Western Europe. They have the most beautiful cathedrals in Christiandom, but they are filled with tourists on weekdays and empty on Sunday.

[DWPittelli]

Ministers must be "blameless" (i.e beyond reproach)

Yes, but it's pretty hard to argue, as I think you do, that one must have always been beyond reproach, given the example of Saint Augustine, a Saint of course, as well as a Bishop and one of the fathers of the early church.