Best way to keep Catholics? Don’t have priests like this:
I was 18 years old and homeless, living in my car. It was the Chicago area in January. Overnight temps were single digits. It was cold...terribly, terribly cold.
Not knowing what else to do, at about 10pm I knocked on the rectory door of the church I had attended. The door opened, the priest who had led many of the masses I had attended standing before me. I said, “Father, I’ve got nowhere to go, can you please help me?” And his words are burned forever in my mind: “I’m sorry, no.” And he closed the door in my face.
Was the LAST time I set foot near a Catholic church.
-— Was the LAST time I set foot near a Catholic church. -—
That’s horrible, but why judge the 2000 year old Church that Christ founded by the actions of one priest? We’re all sinners —even priests.
“Was the LAST time I set foot near a Catholic church.”
So you met one less-than-perfect priest and you judged the whole Church by him? So you judge yourself just as harshly when you fail to be perfect, right? Yeah, gee, I’m sure you do and have nothing to do with yourself as a result, right?
I am so sorry to read your experience. I lived in Chicago during the 1970’s. As a Protestant Evangelical I understand your frustration with the Catholic church but want to believe that others would not have slammed the door shut
Sorry that you had that experience. But one priest does not a Catholic Church make bad. Seek out another priest now and return to the church. For you and your family’s sake, before it is too late.
In before the Catholic church defenders excusing the behavior of the priest as out of the ordinary.
Like you had the misfortune to encounter the ONLY bad priest in the entire church on one random night.
And you’ll be blamed for it, to boot.