VATICAN CITY, June 11, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Sin, satanic influence and the toleration of heresy lie at the root of the priestly sexual abuse scandals, Pope Benedict XVI said today. Precisely because it is an institution erected by God to make himself sacramentally "present to all men and women," the devil is interested in destroying the priesthood, he said.
Referring to the line in Psalm 22 ("Your rod and your staff - they comfort me"), Benedict became explicit about the need for the "rod" of discipline to correct errors in the Church.
"The Church too must use the shepherd's rod," he said, "the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray."
"Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented."
Pope Benedict spoke today to 15,000 priests at the closing Mass of the Vatican's Year for Priests at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
The priesthood, Pope Benedict said, is not "pleasing to the 'enemy,'" (the devil).
"He would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of the world. And so it happened that, in this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light - particularly the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God's concern for our good, turns into its very opposite."
With evident personal sadness, the pope again extended his apology to the victims of sexual abuse, saying, "We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved."
This was followed by a promise to "do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again" by more scrutiny and better formation of those who apply for the priesthood.
Statistics on the abuse scandals have found that the abuse cases are overwhelmingly homosexual in nature and occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, at time in which psychological and theological trends were against excluding men with homosexual inclinations from the priesthood.
Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was clear with a 2005 document issued from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that had oversight on the abuse scandals around the world, that men with such inclinations should not be admitted to seminaries.
Benedict also made more subtle references to the movement from the Church's extreme left wing to open the priesthood to women and to married men. Among the opening lines of his homily, Pope Benedict laid out the nature of the priesthood, saying it is not a matter of mere functionality but a sacramental reality derived from Christ himself.
"The priest is not a mere office-holder," he said, "like those which every society needs in order to carry out certain functions."
Showing posts with label priests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label priests. Show all posts
“Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal"
Lockwood's Review:
The book does provide a solid response to the over-the-top sensationalism that has created more heat than light in understanding sexual abuse of minors yesterday and today. But the authors also present a clear-eyed look at where the church was, what happened and where the church is now in responding to the tragedy of sexual abuse.
While they don’t pretend to answer why sexual abuse happened within the church, they make it clear that it did happen, the church as a whole did not respond properly in the past, and that it is vital that reform and renewal take place to ensure that it does not happen again.
They do make certain strong points in regard to the sensationalism that surrounds the issue today.
There is a not-so-thinly-veiled accusation in media, particularly The New York Times, that Joseph Ratzinger — as a German archbishop, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as Pope Benedict XVI — was at best negligent and, at worst, attempted to cover up and protect abusive priests.
The authors make the definitive case that this is a “defamation of one of the church officials who has understood clearly the scale of the crisis of sexual abuse and who has labored to end it and to reform the church in such a way that it can never happen again.”
At the same time, they point to the extensive progress — virtually ignored in media — that the church has made to address the issue, particularly in the United States.
The church in the United States provides a “road map to reconciliation, reform and authentic justice,” through a dynamic program to ensure a safe environment for young people that is a model not only for the church universal, but for any entity, secular or religious.
The abuse crisis, as it is reported on today, is primarily focused on the church in Europe. But as the authors note, the sexual abuse of minors is a “global crisis” that exists in virtually any entity, secular and religious, anywhere in the world.
The authors provide a brief historical context to the existence of sexual abuse in one form or another dating back to the earliest days of Christianity, a legacy of a Roman culture that accepted the sexual exploitation of children. They cite one of the early Church Fathers, Basil of Caesarea (d. 379), who stated that any priest or monk who molested a young boy should not only be dismissed from the clerical state, but publicly whipped.
“What is manifest,” Erlandson and Bunson note, is that “church authorities have grappled with the problem since the earliest days of the Christian community,” though abuse has never been extensive within the clergy, nor confined to the clergy. Seeing the sexual abuse of minors as somehow a distinctly Catholic institutional issue is to dangerously ignore how deeply entrenched it has been in the human condition.
The authors cite four factors that created the “modern” sexual abuse crisis within the church. The first factor is the scale of the crisis. While the numbers are small, they are universal with cases of abuse in Catholic environments taking place everywhere from Brazil to Newfoundland.
Second, the “modern” crisis became very public. In the past, sexual abuse of children was generally kept private. Whether the environment of abuse was in the home, public schools or the church, cases rarely became public because neither the family nor the institutions wanted it public.
Third, for whatever reasons civic authorities themselves stayed out of the picture. It was a crime, but one that was rarely prosecuted.
Finally, the authors argue, many in church leadership simply refused to believe “that such a profound evil could be lurking in parishes, schools, hospitals and chancery offices — not to mention standing at the altars or sitting in the confessionals of the Catholic Church.”
Today’s crisis — in the sense that the crisis has once again dominated media in America — began with the release of two in-depth government reports in May and November 2009 of abuse that took place in Ireland.
The first report documented decades of abuse inflicted on children in residential institutions run by 15 religious orders. The second report, focusing on the Archdiocese of Dublin, found “a systematic willingness on the part of Catholic leaders to ignore terrible cases of abuse and sexual misconduct — in the hope, mainly, of protecting the good name of the church.”
The report documented that four different Dublin archbishops refused to deal with the abuse problem for nearly three decades, from 1974 to 2004.
Coverage of the scandal in Ireland resulted in the same kind of media scrutiny elsewhere. A case in the Archdiocese of Munich led to media charges that Cardinal Ratzinger had been involved in keeping an abusive priest in active ministry. A case from the 1970s in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee — involving a priest who molested deaf children — led to charges that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger had impeded the priest being removed from ministry.
In both cases, it became clear — after the headlines — that Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up or keeping a priest from being removed. However, media had begun to take aim at Pope Benedict, which is where the story stands today.
The authors are at pains to refute the charges against Pope Benedict. Not only do they point to his innocence, but they make the strong case that the rooting out of abusive priests, and bishops who hid abuse, and safeguarding against future misconduct, are part of an ongoing reform and renewal that the pope has been shaping and directing.
They note that immediately after his election, Pope Benedict proceeded on the case of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a worldwide and influential religious order. Accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians of his order, he was removed from ministry.
The book details Pope Benedict’s ongoing campaign to rid the church of what he calls “filth,” and to put in place universally a screening system to make certain that abusers will never be ordained again. At the same time, he has accepted resignations one after the other of bishops who failed to address the issue of abuse within their dioceses.
“Pope Benedict, both as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as pope, has played a historically pivotal role in the Vatican’s response to the crisis: From leading the CDF’s efforts before and after 2001 in reviewing the case files of suspect priests to his own efforts to address the issue forthrightly as pope, Benedict has grown into a leadership role just when the church has most needed him,” the authors conclude.
“He has met with victims. He has rebuked the abuser priests. He has challenged the bishops. He has overseen a series of procedural reforms that have allowed the church to respond more quickly when it is necessary to restrict, suspend or even laicize a priest,” they state.
Pope Benedict has made it clear, the authors state, that “avoiding scandal” cannot be the response by the church to claims of abuse, that victims and their families must be the church’s deep pastoral concern, and that “this crisis is first and foremost a spiritual challenge to the entire church.”
The authors acknowledge that the church has been unfairly singled out for condemnation and that “there are many agendas at work in the current round of controversies.” They rightly dismiss any implication that abuse exists uniquely in the church, or that church practices such as celibacy, or church doctrine of a male-only clergy, are contributing factors to abuse.
The sexual abuse crisis, they write, requires “accountability that the pope has already established (and) must be continued.” Those who have abused children must be held accountable in both civil and church law. And this accountability must continue to be extended to church leadership.
They state that the Vatican itself should acknowledge its own failure in the past to recognize the scale of the crisis and its own slow pace in responding.
The authors write that the Vatican should also make certain that the norms and policies established in the United States, and England as well, should be principles implemented universally.
The review and screening that has been established in the church of the United States for anyone involved in dealing with children should also become an example for any entity, government or institution that deals with children.
Finally, they state, “the renewal of the priesthood and religious life must continue, with the ultimate aim of renewing the entire people of God in their relationship with Christ.”
This is a strong, courageous and necessary book.
This book is a must read for me.
H/T PittsburghCatholic
New York Times=Anti-Catholic= Journalistic Malpractice
The New York Times is a bed of anti-religious smutt, only seeking to destroy moral absolutism and further the cause and destruction of Christianity, and in particular the Catholic Church. Their legs paper is spread wide open promoting the secular, liberal agenda, anything goes policies (as long as it pertains to liberals), that are against a core set of moral beliefs. They defend Roman Polanski and his sexual deviancy and are a bunch of hypocrites for distorting the facts lying as to the cases of sex abuse within the Catholic Church. The New York Times REFUSED TO POST an article/letter written telling the truth about the sex abuse cases. Here is the article:
"Like many other people, I have felt in recent weeks that some news outlets have unfairly targeted Pope Benedict XVI in connection with sexual abuse by priests.
In part this is a question of emphasis, with daily coverage of what may or may not have been minor mistakes in judgment decades ago and almost no attention to the major efforts Pope Benedict has made to remedy what is undeniably a horrible situation.
With some frequency, however, I have observed what strikes me as deliberate distortion of the facts in order to put Pope Benedict in a bad light. I would like to call your attention to what seems to me a clear example of this sort of partisan journalism: Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo’s article “Pope Put Off Move to Punish Abusive Priest” published on the front page of the New York Times on April 10, 2010. The story is so wrong that it is hard to believe it is not animated by the anti-Catholic animus that the New York Times and other media outlets deny harboring.
Canonical procedure punishes priests who have violated Church law in serious ways by “suspending” them from exercising their ministry. This is sometimes referred to as “defrocking.” (According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary to “defrock” is to deprive of the right to exercise the functions of an office. )
A priest who has been suspended may request that he be released from his vows of celibacy and other obligations as a priest. If granted, this petition to be “laicized” would leave the former priest free to marry. Laicization (which is altogether different from defrocking and which may apply to a priest who has committed no crime but simply wishes to leave the priesthood) is not further punishment. It is something a priest who has already been punished by being suspended might well desire, as do some priests who have committed no crime and who have not been suspended..
The priest who is the subject of the article had already been punished by being suspended long before his case reached Rome. He asked to be laicized. Cardinal Ratzinger delayed his laicization not his “defrocking” as the article incorrectly says. He had been defrocked years earlier when he was suspended from the ministry. All of this is clear without reference to outside sources to anyone who knows something about Church procedure and reads the article with sufficient care. It is anything but clear, however, to a normal reader.
My complaint here is not that the article misuses the word “defrock” but rather that by so doing it strongly suggests to readers that Cardinal Ratzinger delayed the priest’s removal from the ministry. Delaying laicization had nothing to do with allowing him to continue exercising the ministry, from which he had already been suspended.
Not only does the article fail to make these distinctions, it positively misstate the facts. Its title is “Pope Put off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.” [italics added] It describes Cardinal Ratzinger’s decision as involving whether the abusive priest “should be forced from the priesthood” [italics added]. Even a moderately careful journalist would have to notice that all of this is incompatible with the fact (reported in the second paragraph of the article) that the priest himself had asked for what Cardinal Ratziner delayed.
Had the facts been reported accurately, the article would have said that the priest was promptly punished by being removed from the ministry for his crimes, but that when he asked to be reduced to the lay state, which would have given him the right to marry within the Church, Cardinal Ratzinger delayed granting the petition. That, of course, would hardly have merited front page treatment, much less a headline accusing the Pope of “Putt[ing] off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.”
The second half of the article reports that the priest later worked as a volunteer in the youth ministry of his former parish. This is obviously regrettable and should not have happened, but he was not acting as a priest (youth ministers are laymen, not priests).
A careful reader who was not misled by the inaccuracies in the first part of the article would, of course, realize that his volunteering as a youth minister had no factual or legal connection with Cardinal Ratzinger’s delaying the grant of laicization. The article does not say in so many words that it did, but an average reader might well conclude that there was some connection when he is told that “while the bishop was pressing Cardinal Ratzinger to defrock Mr. Kiesle, the priest began volunteering in the youth ministry of one of his former parishes.”
Any one of these errors might be due to carelessness, but their cumulative effect, coupled with the decision to make this front page news accompanied by a two column photo of Cardinal Raztinger’s signature, strongly suggests to me that something worse than carelessness is involved. I urge you to look into whether some major news outlets have indeed been engaged in a campaign to vilify the Pope and into whether their desire to do so has caused them to slip below minimum standards of professional journalism"
John Coverdale is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law
H/T MercatorNet B16
"Like many other people, I have felt in recent weeks that some news outlets have unfairly targeted Pope Benedict XVI in connection with sexual abuse by priests.
In part this is a question of emphasis, with daily coverage of what may or may not have been minor mistakes in judgment decades ago and almost no attention to the major efforts Pope Benedict has made to remedy what is undeniably a horrible situation.
With some frequency, however, I have observed what strikes me as deliberate distortion of the facts in order to put Pope Benedict in a bad light. I would like to call your attention to what seems to me a clear example of this sort of partisan journalism: Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo’s article “Pope Put Off Move to Punish Abusive Priest” published on the front page of the New York Times on April 10, 2010. The story is so wrong that it is hard to believe it is not animated by the anti-Catholic animus that the New York Times and other media outlets deny harboring.
Canonical procedure punishes priests who have violated Church law in serious ways by “suspending” them from exercising their ministry. This is sometimes referred to as “defrocking.” (According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary to “defrock” is to deprive of the right to exercise the functions of an office. )
A priest who has been suspended may request that he be released from his vows of celibacy and other obligations as a priest. If granted, this petition to be “laicized” would leave the former priest free to marry. Laicization (which is altogether different from defrocking and which may apply to a priest who has committed no crime but simply wishes to leave the priesthood) is not further punishment. It is something a priest who has already been punished by being suspended might well desire, as do some priests who have committed no crime and who have not been suspended..
The priest who is the subject of the article had already been punished by being suspended long before his case reached Rome. He asked to be laicized. Cardinal Ratzinger delayed his laicization not his “defrocking” as the article incorrectly says. He had been defrocked years earlier when he was suspended from the ministry. All of this is clear without reference to outside sources to anyone who knows something about Church procedure and reads the article with sufficient care. It is anything but clear, however, to a normal reader.
My complaint here is not that the article misuses the word “defrock” but rather that by so doing it strongly suggests to readers that Cardinal Ratzinger delayed the priest’s removal from the ministry. Delaying laicization had nothing to do with allowing him to continue exercising the ministry, from which he had already been suspended.
Not only does the article fail to make these distinctions, it positively misstate the facts. Its title is “Pope Put off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.” [italics added] It describes Cardinal Ratzinger’s decision as involving whether the abusive priest “should be forced from the priesthood” [italics added]. Even a moderately careful journalist would have to notice that all of this is incompatible with the fact (reported in the second paragraph of the article) that the priest himself had asked for what Cardinal Ratziner delayed.
Had the facts been reported accurately, the article would have said that the priest was promptly punished by being removed from the ministry for his crimes, but that when he asked to be reduced to the lay state, which would have given him the right to marry within the Church, Cardinal Ratzinger delayed granting the petition. That, of course, would hardly have merited front page treatment, much less a headline accusing the Pope of “Putt[ing] off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.”
The second half of the article reports that the priest later worked as a volunteer in the youth ministry of his former parish. This is obviously regrettable and should not have happened, but he was not acting as a priest (youth ministers are laymen, not priests).
A careful reader who was not misled by the inaccuracies in the first part of the article would, of course, realize that his volunteering as a youth minister had no factual or legal connection with Cardinal Ratzinger’s delaying the grant of laicization. The article does not say in so many words that it did, but an average reader might well conclude that there was some connection when he is told that “while the bishop was pressing Cardinal Ratzinger to defrock Mr. Kiesle, the priest began volunteering in the youth ministry of one of his former parishes.”
Any one of these errors might be due to carelessness, but their cumulative effect, coupled with the decision to make this front page news accompanied by a two column photo of Cardinal Raztinger’s signature, strongly suggests to me that something worse than carelessness is involved. I urge you to look into whether some major news outlets have indeed been engaged in a campaign to vilify the Pope and into whether their desire to do so has caused them to slip below minimum standards of professional journalism"
John Coverdale is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law
H/T MercatorNet B16
In Defense of Pope Benedict XVI
In my life, I am one of the people that has been the hardest on priests and the Church because of the sexual abuse scandal. I was not sexually abused but let’s just say I might have well have been given a flash or preview of the future into the huge cover ups of sexual abuse that was committed by priests within the Church. This is unconscionable! These priests betrayed both the trust of children and God when they abused their role as priests by committing such horrendous acts. These priests stripped away childrens’ innocence from them and misused their trust all so that they could appease their feelings. Pope Benedict has acted as swiftly as possible to remove the priests who sexually abused children. I feel that it is my duty as a Catholic to defend the Pope and his honor when his character is wrongly assassinated by both the secular community and dissenters from within the Church who seek to destroy the very foundation of the Catholic Church.
Here is some evidence to show that Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) had no part in any cover up of the priests' sexual abuse scandals:
Fr. Lawrence Murphy was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003 and is writing to clarify details and reveal the reality of the abuse cases with regards to Cardical Ratzinger who is now Pope Benedict XVI.
Fr. Murphy says:
I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.
As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing from a sense of duty to the truth.
The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.
My intent in writing this column is to accomplish the following:
To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;
To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;
To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;
To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.
Before proceeding, it is important to point out the scourge that child sexual abuse has been — not only for the church but for society as well. Few actions can distort a child’s life more than sexual abuse. It is a form of emotional and spiritual homicide and it starts a trajectory toward a skewed sense of sexuality. When committed by a person in authority, it creates a distrust of almost anyone, anywhere.
As a volunteer prison chaplain in Alaska, I have found a corollary between those who have been incarcerated for child sexual abuse and the priests who have committed such grievous actions. They tend to be very smart and manipulative. They tend to be well liked and charming. They tend to have one aim in life — to satisfy their hunger. Most are highly narcissistic and do not see the harm that they have caused. They view the children they have abused not as people but as objects. They rarely show remorse and moreover, sometimes portray themselves as the victims. They are, in short, dangerous people and should never be trusted again. Most will recommit their crimes if given a chance.
As for the numerous reports about the case of Father Murphy, the back-story has not been reported as of yet.
In 1996, I was introduced to the story of Father Murphy, formerly the principal of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. It had been common knowledge for decades that during Father Murphy’s tenure at the school (1950-1974) there had been a scandal at St. John’s involving him and some deaf children. The details, however, were sketchy at best.
Courageous advocacy on behalf of the victims (and often their wives), led the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to revisit the matter in 1996. In internal discussions of the curia for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, it became obvious that we needed to take strong and swift action with regard to the wrongs of several decades ago. With the consent of then-Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, we began an investigation into the allegations of child sexual abuse as well as the violation of the crime of solicitation within the confessional by Father Murphy.
We proceeded to start a trial against Father Murphy. I was the presiding judge in this matter and informed Father Murphy that criminal charges were going to be levied against him with regard to child sexual abuse and solicitation in the confessional.
In my interactions with Father Murphy, I got the impression I was dealing with a man who simply did not get it. He was defensive and threatening. CONTINUED HERE
Fr. Raymond J. de Souza responds here to the outrageous NYT article. I will not pass along that piece of hate filled anti-Catholic propoganda.
There is a HUGE cover up under way. See here:
WORCESTER, MA. A former pastor Andrew J. Bierkan, 54, at the First Congregational Church of Sutton who now heads a church in Ohio has been indicted here on charges of unnatural rape of a child and posing a child in a state of nudity. He is now pastor of St. Paul United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, according to Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte. (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, August 13, 2003)
Eddie Thomas, pastor of St. Luke Baptist Church in Ringgold, LA., is arrested and charged with indecent behavior with a juvenile, aggravated incest and pornography involving a juvenile. (the Shreveport Times, July 17, 2003)
South Austrailia, AUS. A South Australian police task force into child sex abuse within the Anglican Church had identified 217 victims and 48 possible offenders, police said today. However the number of victims could rise to more than 400 as investigations continued, Police Commissioner Mal Hyde said. Mr Hyde today likened the scale of police investigations into child sex abuse to those for the infamous Snowtown bodies-in-the-barrels murders in 1999. (The Age, July 16 2003)
Lake Wales, FL. The pastor at the Church of the Nazarene has been charged with sexually assaulting a male 17-year-old youth leader three times in 2001. The Rev. Gene Francis, 52, of Lake Wales, was arrested Tuesday and charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor. (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 4, 2003)
Tuscon, AZ. The Rev. David Valencia, 47, assistant pastor of a Pentecostal church is expected in court Wednesday on rape charges issued by Pennsylvania authorities. In Pennsylvania, Valencia was an assistant pastor at Christ Church at Grove Farm, an interdenominational church that uses Anglican liturgy. The pastor of Christ Church, the Rev. John Guest, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Valencia was dismissed in late 2001 because he was found to have pornography on an office computer after he was warned about a similar incident months earlier. (Tucson Citizen, May 31, 2003)
CONTINUED HERE
ALL SEX ABUSE SCANDALS ARE BOTH HORRENDOUS AND UNCONSCIONABLE. Hmmm... But, it is becoming clear that the secular community (particularly liberals) along with Church dissidents have an axe to grind and a vendetta against the Catholic Church. The truth must be exposed!
Reverence VS. Idolatry of the Powerful
Should people idolize individuals that are powerful in the world?
I think that sometimes as people we can look up to individuals who should be revered but it can turn into almost like an obsession or idolatry. As individuals we can look up to people who we believe are role models but should we follow and look up to these individuals like they are the be all and end all of everything? We should not put individuals on pedestals like they can do no wrong. We have to realize that everyone is human and can make mistakes and can give in to the temptations of evil in our society.
How exactly were you raised to look at your church leaders?
While growing up I was taught that the priests were like Jesus and in effect almost like Gods. In my opinion the priests are representatives called by God but not in and of themselves like Gods. Priests are in no way perfect. Priests are susceptible to sin just as much you and me. I think that we need to stop putting priests on pedestals and realize that they are human beings that can sin also. Jesus is omnipotent and an all powerful, infallible God but we must not perceive priests in this light. Priests strive to be like God but are not infallible like God.
Priests and other church leaders are great people who are leading others by their good examples, in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am friends with many priests and revere them but do not idolize them. I just think as individuals we must realize that these powerful individuals are human also and can also be tempted and even give in to sin. In my opinion powerful individuals must be revered but not idolized.
I think that sometimes as people we can look up to individuals who should be revered but it can turn into almost like an obsession or idolatry. As individuals we can look up to people who we believe are role models but should we follow and look up to these individuals like they are the be all and end all of everything? We should not put individuals on pedestals like they can do no wrong. We have to realize that everyone is human and can make mistakes and can give in to the temptations of evil in our society.
How exactly were you raised to look at your church leaders?
While growing up I was taught that the priests were like Jesus and in effect almost like Gods. In my opinion the priests are representatives called by God but not in and of themselves like Gods. Priests are in no way perfect. Priests are susceptible to sin just as much you and me. I think that we need to stop putting priests on pedestals and realize that they are human beings that can sin also. Jesus is omnipotent and an all powerful, infallible God but we must not perceive priests in this light. Priests strive to be like God but are not infallible like God.
Priests and other church leaders are great people who are leading others by their good examples, in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am friends with many priests and revere them but do not idolize them. I just think as individuals we must realize that these powerful individuals are human also and can also be tempted and even give in to sin. In my opinion powerful individuals must be revered but not idolized.
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