Not happy about sermon tonight referring to sex abuse

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Feel whatever you want. Your integrity isn’t in question. The possibility of the Church’s being so is integral to this thread, given a long history of cover ups.
 
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Only if they’re brought in from other denominations or the EO tradition.
 
I’m sorry you’re experiencing that. If you’d like a good priest’s homilies, send me a PM and I’ll link you to his blog. His work has kept me connected to the Church.

Have you considered writing a letter to your bishop to that effect?
 
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How? Many professions are demanding and require on-call work, deep and meaningful care of others, and work family balance.
 
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alphawoman said:
How? Many professions are demanding and require on-call work, deep and meaningful care of others, and work family balance.
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My husband actually has a job that is somewhat like that–but it’s still quite distinct from the special burdens of a pastor’s family.
 
I do feel what I want and I feel you are clearly uncharitable with many of your “opinions” stated as fact.
 
I don’t know what married Catholic priests’ families are like, but here are some observations from my contacts with the Protestant world:

–Being expected to live a middle class lifestyle, even without a middle class income.
–People encroaching on their family time. (I have some friends who when the husband was a new pastor, there was a troubled couple that would routinely require 3 hours of their time.)
–Everybody in the family always needing to be “on.”
–Expectations of extensive service by the wife.
–Wife’s church obligations encroaching on her family obligations.

You can find some good titles on how to be a pastor’s wife. I love the cover on this one:


I bought that for my friend the pastor’s wife, when she and her husband (both very conscientious people) were struggling with appropriate boundaries.
 
If you read any books about being a pastor’s wife, you can get a feel for what kind of burdens I’m talking about.
 
I made no comment about you or your interpretation. Any offence is imagined or misinterpreted because we’re communicating over text.
 
That is definitely a demanding life, and I am deeply respectful of families who so wholly devote themselves to their careers/vocations.

As a counterpoint that priest/pastor families have distinct demands:
  • Senior military and dignitary families are regularly on call, responsible for hosting large work functions at home (including heavy work requirements by spouses and family), and can have irregular, demanding, and time intensive requirements on their time. For example, a deployment can happen any time! A senior military strategist can be called into the Prime Minister/President’s briefings for full days.
  • Medical personnel work long shifts on call, with strong demands placed on family to accommodate the medical worker.
  • Senior executives work long hours, bring spouses and children to social events, and entertain extensively at home. Most of my colleagues and I live near work so we minimize the impact on our families of heavy work, client, and travel demands.
  • Emergency responders and military members literally risk their lives and injury in the line of duty, and their families pay the price of losing a loved one to injury, physical illness, psychiatric illness, or death. Few families of priests or pastors in the west face the risk of a loved one dying in the line of duty.
 
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I know many pastor’s wives that happen to be Protestant active duty chaplain’s wives. Funny thing about the lives we as families live (retired active duty family myself—not chaplain corps though), when we are in the thick of it, all it is is life. When it comes down to it, it is our life and we deal with things as they come. Most of us went into “harder” career and family paths knowing full well the commitment we were making. The advantage to a married, Catholic priesthood is that the couple must already be married and both must consent. They both have to prepare spiritually and intellectually. The process is long and can be dropped at any time. It is a commitment made by the couple, unlike some other careers (including military) where only one spouse really has the power to decide to continue. Yes, the other spouse can influence or even leave if they choose, but the career is the choice of only one spouse.

Playing the “this spouse” or “that spouse” has it harder game really isn’t a good idea. Many people ask how I could possibly deal with numerous deployments while dealing with 6 kids and health issues and a full time job for 25 years, that I must be stronger than most. The truth is, not really. It was what life handed our family and we just had to do what needed to be done. We found what worked, we cried our tears, and we celebrated our joys just as all families do. Each family has trials. None are really “worse” than others as long as we deal with them properly. To me, the hardest part was when others would talk about “how hard it must be” and say there was no way they could “deal with that”. It was our life and it was worth living.
 
This is a really informative post. Thanks! So it’s almost a matter of seeing it as a dual vocation.
 
I think that marriages that work are always a dual vocation, but non traditional situations require much more commitment.
 
Horton said:
I think you should continue to study the issue to make a valid claim. Being “gay” doesn’t make one a pedophile or hebephile (one who prefers adolescents). The vast majority of sexual offenders who prefer boys identify as heterosexual.
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I never said being gay makes one a pedophile or hebephile, but when the Vatican studied this, they came to the conclusion that the vast majority of these abuse cases were homosexual men preying on teen boys. The majority. A minority abused both male and female younger children. I’m not talking about all of society, but specifically this issue within the Catholic Church.
 
One can hardly deny that the bulk of the abuse problem within the Catholic Church has been homosexual in nature. The John Jay Report commissioned by the USCCB showed that in the U.S., some 80% of the abuse cases were male predators targeting boys.

Msgr. Charles Pope writes:

“We should be clear that most people with same sex attraction do not commit sexual crimes or seek to seduce or sexually abuse younger men. Many people with same-sex attraction do live chastely and follow the teachings of the Church.

This is not a sweeping characterization of all people with same-sex attraction.

But the statistical evidence of the recent scandals shows a highly disproportionate level of homosexual involvement. The numbers are well-demonstrated in both experience and in the John Jay Report.”

 
The priest at Mass this morning addressed it head on, said it was shameful and that he personally felt ashamed as a priest, and that the hierarchy needs to be held accountable. He then said how he understands why some feel the necessity – at this moment – to walk away. However, he tied it to today’s Gospel: “Where shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”
 
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