Tell me about it. Or when people say such imbecilic things as “Jesus is my homebody.” It gives the impression that they think of Jesus more as a “nice guy” or a “cool guy”, rather than what He truly is: Our Lord and King and final Judge who demands that we take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him.
excellent observation… bringing Our Lord down to our level, rather than elevating us up to His level.
I have a close group of orthodox Catholics friends and I venture to say that all of them would feel the same way. The kind of priests we are attracted to are the ones who act like real men, as an alter Christus should. The ones who command our respect and set an example we wish to aspire to, not the ones who try to “come down to our level.” The ones who in their actions and manner of speech and dress clearly set themselves apart from the world rather than trying to imitate its silly fads and vanities.
It seems that everyone knows what will attract ‘the young people,’ and yet, nobody seems to have asked *them *what they’d like. You’ve clearly found yourself a good group of friends, and have the ability to distinguish authenticity from affectation. Our priest, isn’t too much older than the ‘Punk Priest,’ and yet, he acts as you’ve described - a real man, and not a kid in a man’s body. And yet, our young folks flock to him. Our parish does the opposite of lowering the bar for our younger members. Instead, we raise it, and as a rule, they meet or exceed our expectations.
I’m on Myspace and Facebook, of the two I prefer Facebook because Myspace does seem, as you said, creepy. It’s not so much the fact that a priest is on myspace, especially if he is a young priest. There is another priest I have seen on myspace who seems to use his profile page as a way to evangelize. This punk priest, though, seems to use myspace to promote himself and his own gig.
I agree… I don’t have a problem with the fact that he has a Myspace page, but rather, with the content. Because of the style of his page, and the strange background music that accompanies it, you have to dig a bit to find out that he’s really a priest. And the comments are mostly from very young people, particularly young ladies, and as Detroit Sue said earlier, “that’s a little disconcerting.” There’s lots of talk about him, his musical interests, and his hot li’l red sports car, and oh yeah, a little talk about ‘the big JC,’ too
It doesn’t exactly fit with the dignity due Our Lord by His servants.
The opposite experience is going to confession to a crusty old Irish guy who smells of cigarette smoke but is clearly “old school” in his ways. You can’t help but think, “Now, this guy has seen a thing or two and knows what he’s talking about…”
