I found this article looking for something else but it is relevant to the scandals. I’ll link and post some quotes from an article from OSV with Sr. Briege McKenna.
OSV : You just mentioned in passing the work you do with priests. That’s been a primary focus for you in recent years. How did that start?
Sister Brieg e: It actually began not long after my own physical healing. I came to Florida in 1971 as a young nun. I’d grown up in a very devout Catholic culture, and we’d been taught never to criticize priests. I remember my father telling us stories about how we should honor them. And we should, of course, but many of us were doing it in the wrong way, putting them up on a pedestal.
Well, in 1971, that was changing, and I found myself, like many, becoming quite critical of priests. One day, I went into the chapel and asked God, “What’s wrong with these priests?” He then revealed two things to me. First, he showed me that a tremendous crisis was coming, a crisis that would lead to a great famine of the Word of God, and that Catholics would turn away from the faith.
(…)
OSV : How has a wrong understanding of celibacy contributed to that fall?
Sister Briege : When a man is called to the priesthood, God doesn’t take away his sexuality. It’s normal to be attracted to another. And, as Pope John Paul II writes in his first letter to priests, the Lord has every right to challenge us. We’re not guaranteed freedom from temptation. What we are guaranteed is the grace of God. That grace can help us understand that celibacy is not a denial of human love.
Celibacy is a consecration of your most precious gift of sexuality to Almighty God. You offer it to the Lord. And you take time to discern if that’s an offering you can make. When you make it, God consecrates the gift of your sexuality and gives it back to you with a new power.
But you have to both understand that you’ve given it freely — it’s not something that’s been taken from you — and that you have to choose every day to remain faithful, just as a married person does.
(…)
OSV : From what you’ve seen with the priests with whom you work, do you believe better days are ahead?
Sister Briege : I do. God is rectifying what’s happened. He’s cleansing the Church. And we’ve been so blessed to have such holy popes in our lifetime. It hasn’t always been like this. But the Church survived, and now we have a great pope leading us into a new springtime.
Before we see the fruit, there has to be purification, and the ground has to be fertilized. But the springtime is coming. The Church has been humiliated, and that’s good.
