My Spanish speaking mother in law loved to listen to Padre Alberto. I couldn't blame her, a tall good looking, well spoken priest, whose preaching attracted millions "Padre Oprah" had all the qualities he needed to be successful and thus he was attacked by the enemy, falling into temptation. Faithful Catholics are getting used to the sight of a shamed priest, voicing relief that he wasn't involved in something illegal.
The same thing happened to Fr Francis Mary Stone, and Fr John Bertolucci. Popularity puts a priest in a precarious position for temptation by women who should know better. They both need our prayers, better priestly formation, and a wise superior who can see trouble coming a mile away.I maintain that if Mother Angelica were herself when that young widow came looking for Fr Stone to counsel her, she would have sensed danger and given her a good nun to speak with; result a good priest saved from temptation to leave his vocation and be stuck pushing the health drink zrii.
Or when the good looking parish priest who officiated at my wedding had a long line of young women waiting to speak to him after Mass every Sunday. Could trouble be far behind? Fr Tom didn't make it, he left the priesthood, married, and now works as a professor at a Catholic College. Such a loss to the Church. The last time I heard him talk at a community college, we was praising the wonders of Islam.
We must remember to pray for our priests, the higher they are in the public eye, the more the enemy wants to scandalize us with their downfall. The most tragic is that many times, they go down slowly, taking the purity of their message down with them.
Celibacy is a high calling, but it must be protected in this lascivious anti-Catholic culture. Otherwise, the media fall into a feeding frenzy thinking it's time to tell the Holy Father to permit a married priesthood. We already have a married clergy; Catholic permanent deacons who are married do everything that Protestant Ministers do: baptize, marry, bless, preach, visit the sick, and teach.
Fr Farfalia has a post on the origins of the problem with Fr Alberto.
5 comments:
Good post. As Catholics we are called to give offer our entire being to Christ. A vocation should not be chosen in the same way we choose a job. It's a calling. Also, if we had married priests, would it not be likely that priests might leave for other reasons, stress of parish life too great, wife wants priests to make more money, jealous of time he spends with parishoners. Ask any honest pastor's wife and she'll tell you that the family strain in enormous. I'm not definatively saying there should or never will be married priests, for it is a church discipline, not divine law...however it will not end the scandals as long as sexual perversion pervades our culture.
And what I don't understand is why these priests who have fallen feel they must leave the priesthood, provided they have done nothing illegal. Why can't Fr. Cutie, and others like him, confess, dust themselves off, pick up their cross and keep going, like the rest of us? God will give them the grace to refrain from future sin, he has to, he provides for our needs. Where is the trust?
In reading more online today about Fr. Cutie and what the MSM had to say on him, I was particularily saddened to hear how brazen he was and unapologetic about wanting to keep the girl and the priesthood. Like he knew nothing about Church teaching on celibacy, a VOW he took, sex before marriage, birth control?...I am left wondering about a whole host of areas where he might have led parishioners in to sin during the confessional? I have to wonder? Is he a man full of pride and so sought out the media to feed that ego but needed even more? Did he trust in his own impulses ratioanlizing them rather than the wisdom of the church all these centuries....
Very upsetting, scandalous and I'm tempted further to believe he may even be pushing his agenda....you want priests? good Looking , young priests? Well, your going to have to pay up and let them have their basest desires rather than calling them to the higher ground of an Alter Christi....
Being the conduit of transubstantiation, bringing down Jesus Christ, truly present in the Eucharist is the greatest good a priest is called to do. It's miraculous! Why let the devil convince you that selling a sports drink will could ever be as equally fulfilling?
Our priests are the devil's targets, pray for them.
Anonymous, Fr Cutie in an interview yesterday admitted that his relationship with the divorced woman seen with him on the beach goes back 2 years. He seems unwilling to leave her, so he's at a crossroads. Again, where were his superiors, many people must have known about this affair, why did it take a tabloid to bring it out?
Now I see why St. Therese the little flower thought it so important to pray for the souls of priests.
Great post.
Post a Comment