People need to go back to when celibacy became mandatory and see the church in the state it was in then with married clergy and so on.
I always recommend St. Catherine of Siena’s ‘Dialogues’, and the book of ‘The Church’.
Clergy abuse is most evil and the greatest scandal against the sacrament. I don’t see the laity doing their part either of praying and doing penance for the clergy…there has been omissives and scandals on the church as a whole.
My kids went to Catholic schools. Here in the NW, the saying goes if you want to have your kids loose their faith, send them there…it is all about activities and worldly success, and religion is taught as another subject…
My kids went to a private school in Seattle. The pastor used to be the chaplain of the orphans when he was first ordained…the parish was essentially working to lower middle class families…Tuition was affordable for everyone, not just the affluent. He visited the kids every day, took each class to confession every two months, taught them the old Baltimore catechism and Srs of St Paul, included them in his homilies to adults. The school had a swingset, black top, monkey bars, and a barrel full of balls for games. That was it. The priest wanted the parish to be more a family than a community to one another. My kids remember it as the good old days. Religion was placed in hall way as greatest importance. School was not obsessed with frantic activity and image. It had the highest test scores of all parochial schools in Western Washington. But once the kids got out into the high schools and college, many had lost their faith. Mine were affected by the scandals in this diocese and the lack of charity in some places among Catholics themselves.
I see all this the effects of the tip of the tail of the dragon of Revelations sweeping the stars, consecrated to God and their people because of seemingly innocent attachments to the world, of being relational…the impact of modern communications today does seem to delve right into your own sense of privacy and contemplation. And the proliferation of pornography…as well as alleged inroads into our seminaries in the last century by those intending to chip away at the hierarchy for a more humane god.
