Try being a Catholic man that had a vocation to the priesthood and it got thrown out of kilter by proselytizing fundamentalist and the existing priests I knew wouldn’t help me… I still feel the call. BUt now since I marry the daughter of the Proselytizing Fundamental evenagelist I can no longer consider the priesthood.
Sure, this is a moment of great pause for those of us, men, that found ourselves drawn to the priesthood but couldn’t get past the gag reflexes of what was happening universally across our seminaries. The atmosphere is ripe for the taking…That is the taking away the gift of a celibate priesthood. I think that many Protestants set a good example for us to follow by following their own faith. However, there are far too many unnoticed Catholics that live out their faith exemplary without notice…why…because we are called to be a peaceful people, not a proselytizing people…willing to do and say almost anything to convert someone to my faith. I truly beleive that statistically there are far more Catholics or at least the same statistically living wonderful devout Christian lives in spite of the anti-Catholic rhetoric around us. Some of them are even ignorant…and have practiced obedience to a “TEE”. Praise God for them.
Maybe God is leading the Church back to Orthodoxy…married priesthood like in the East. Many clergy in our history are not only guilty of many mortal sins with sexual scandals but they are guilty of defending their celibate priesthood with the same selfishness. The celebate priesthood is a gift from God. We’ve …both laity and clergy have abused it so much. Women screaming to want to be priests, other men screaming to allow it, men and women breaking vows not only in marriage, but also their vocations…oh my…how sinful we are… But God is in control no matter what we do or say. He is always in control.
It’s a great mystery to me what’s happening, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Latin Church begin to allow married men to be priests one day for more often than we see now. This could turn out to be the eccuminical movement of our time. Surely Protestant clergy run across the truth but get stuck with no way out. It’s freightening and sometimes causes us to lose family. I know…I was baptized Catholic as an infant 14 months old, but mom raised me Protestant because she loathed Catholicism. She rejected the faith while studying it with my dad before I was born. In fact, I moved with my Catholic dad, very traditionalist oriented more conservative than fundamentalists, and I finally received the Eucharist at the age of almost 15. 5 months later I’m living in Baptist country with no car to get to mass which was 30 miles away. Went to the seminary and some really bad things happened to me… The example was horrible. Lots of men that became priests walked away or something. The Church was in utter chaos in the states. No one would educate me no matter how hard I tried to learn. Not everything is easy and makes sense like the fundamentalists try to tell you. Now I’m quite a bible thumper if I want to be. But I don’t do that now, because I finally got hold of the Church Fathers. Read what the real early Christians believed and that the name Katholikos was alive and well back then… So Antioch is known for being the first place where the name Christian was used for us. But it is also the first place we know where the name Catholic was used. It’s a frightening reality for a Protestant to swallow. They reject it out right because their entire faith is called into question…just like mine was by them many years ago about my baptism.
My point is that we need to work towards understand what Catholicism really teaches rather than bashing it at every turn…and I’m talking to the Catholics.
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I would have given my all to help…maybe I will get a chance to serve like that again as a returning Catholic.
I knew that it wasn’t likely but it was a fair question. Now my wife is very Catholic. God works in mysterious ways. It seems that this trend is opening up doors, but only time will tell.