Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Some Truth about my Church.

Mean Ol Meany has some interesting facts regarding Priests who molest children:

"There have been twenty-two priests charged with the crimes of molestation, fondling, and child abuse in the last three years. Ninety-six percent of the Catholic Dioceses have no record of any of these crimes committed. The overwhelming majority are from the Northeast and we know that they are not part of Jesusland, but rather part of the United States of Canada. More numbers to support some of the things that I spewed: The vast majority of these crimes took place in the late sixties and early seventies. Not to say there have not been some of these crimes committed before or after, but most occurred then."

He goes on to say that out of 148 defrocked priests, 137 of them were ordained in the 1960's. I haven't really commented on this before because frankly the whole thing makes me sick. I hate the way the media portrays it as if this kind of thing is common in our Church when millions of holy and good men have been and are wonderful priests and far far more single and married men not involved in any church are child molesters.

But the 1960's was an insane time for our Church. We in America opened the doors to all sorts of experimentation in who becomes a priest and the direction our Church was going. Needless to say, we screwed up big time. Also needless to say, I feel the priests who did this are perverted evil men and I hope they get what they deserve.

No disrespect to the Northeast, but you have to wonder what the heck goes on there that the majority of cases come from there. My own feeling is the liberal culture of anything goes contributed to men going into the Priesthood who really had no business doing so.

I know that since the early 80's there as been a pendulum swing in the Church back to the conservative values that are important to maintain. My son's school is run by The Legionaries of Christ, an order of young very traditional holy priests that are very dedicated to our faith and keeping our Church on the path of Christ.

I felt a need to post on this since I know that having been a former Protestant there is very little knowledge of the Catholic Church and sometimes the only thing you hear about it is from the media. I just don't want that notion out there that priests tend to be perverts. That is just wrong and clearly not true. I remember the music minister in my Baptist church when I was in Jr High had an affair with a woman in the choir. It was shocking to us, but members of any church do sin and sometime do terrible things. That does not diminish the faith or the truth found within our faiths.

I don't want this to be a debate about Priests or about the differences in our Christian faiths. I find no good comes from those debates in a public way. I just wanted this perspective out there for those interested.