Someone mentioned Judas. Are not priests like apostles in the sense of their intimate contact with the holiness of Christ? These sexual scandals bring to the fore the old question of whether Judas was acting on his free will, or was he ,in fact, a man preordained to live out his nefarious fate. These pedophile priests could not inflict more harm on the Church if they were born apostates of Hell, acting out a predetermined role in some malignant plot. This thing is mysterious to me. My reason cannot come to terms with it. An evil stain marks the holy vestments because of these heinous crimes, contaminating the very image of trust and fidelity within the faith: The collar itself. I refuse to believe this to be merely a coincidental gathering of evil, perverted clergymen populating the church in an era simultaneously, and at random. A sinister force is at work here.
As far as Judas, I am going through the book of Luke at this moment, and this is what he wrote regarding Judas: “Then Satan entered into Judas, the one surnamed Iscariot, who was counted among the Twelve” St. Luke 22:3
As I recall, that during Jesus’ actual ministry, all of the apostles struggled with faith. Jesus used to get frustred at times because of their lack of faith. I believe this is why Satan was allowed to enter Judas because of his lack of faith. Note that whenever Jesus exorsised a demon it was from someone of great faith, one time the demon willingly left recognizing him as “Son of God”.
Having said this, I believe Judas’ faith was weak that’s why Satan was allowed to enter. Judas is ALL of us. He can be seen that part of us that is weak in our faith.
The bishops and priests are direct successors of the apostles and their disciples. Just because you are ordained a priest doesn’t mean you are immune from the influences of Satan. In fact, BECAUSE they are instruments of Christ, they are the ones Satan is going to go after first. I thought I read somewhere the ‘supposable’, St. Padre Pio was attacked at times by demons. Remember, Satan’s original intention was to become God himself. Who do you think he’s going to go after? If you want to destroy your enemy, you gotta get your foot in the door, right?? Therefore, he is going after our priests so he can destroy our church from within and take over when he’s done killing everyone. It’s a very clever and very popoular military strategy : Destroy your enemy from within and take over. Satan is a master at war strategies.
The second thing I wanted to say about child molestation is this: You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t blatently ignore the problem in your community, but then become outraged when it happens in the catholic church. You can’t have this “Me and my right” syndrome to buy into the sexuallization of our culture not expect consequences. “If I buy a Playboy who is it going to hurt?” Well, you are not exactly helping to slow down the progress, you are just “fueling the fire” or in other words…the money pit. People don’t believe that their “rights” have consequences anymore. They do!!! What do people think the fruit of sexualization of our culture is??? It’s child molestation, teen pregnancy, human trafficking…we could go on and on.
These are the consequences of forcefeeding our society about this blatant lie called “sexual rights”.
The other lie we have to stop telling people is “you can’t resist temptation”. That is absoluetly not true. Yes these priests can do it. They are the front line, fighting the enemy head on in the trenches and we are behind them ‘covering their back’.
A big part of me feels like I was asleep for the last oh…20 years or so and I just woke up and realize…wait a minute? Our society doesn’t stress consequences of our actions anymore. In fact, we create solutions to counter the consequence. Now we say…"its ok if you are 15 and get pregnant, here is a morning-after pill, you’ll be up and around in no time. Its ok if you eat a 2000 calorie meal three times a day because we are going to have a universal health plan to jump start your heart as many times as you want and you won’t have to shell out a penny!
