My 75 year old father, who lives alone in Riverside County since my mother's death last year, called me the other day to relay how his most recent visit to the doctor went. (Blessedly, his health is good and his mind is still the "steel-trap" it always was!) As we chit-chatted, he mentioned to me that he had recently read an article in the newspaper about the possible federal indictment of Cardinal Roger Mahoney for his active participation, actual orchestration, of the covering up of the clergy sex abuse scandal.
Cardinal Mahoney's misdeeds have always been of interest as when my family lived in the O.C., and my mother was alive, she became friends with Cardinal Mahoney's late mother who went to daily mass at the same Church that my mother usually attended daily too.
There was never a more devout woman, in the old traditional sense of the word. How she produced the current Archbishop of Los Angeles is a mystery. But I digress as this post is not about Cardinal Mahoney.
My dad had been in conversation at his Knights of Columbus Chapter and the conversation turned to the amount of monetary damages, and their effect on the institutional Church. My father commented that this was completely the wrong focus. Relaying this after the fact to me on the telephone, he nonetheless repeated his sage words:
"We can have a Church without buildings, but we cannot have a Church - a Catholic Church - without good and holy priests!"
Every year I get older my father gets wiser, and boy did he hit the nail on the head with that statement. My dad's catechesis was a lot like my catechesis, based on memorization and simple educational tools ala the Baltimore Catechism. As we seem to have a large number of non-catholics commenting here I'll synopsize as to "why" priests are important.
1.) Man must have God's grace to achieve Salvation.
2.) The Seven (-7-) Sacraments are the primary means by which man receives grace.
3.) Priests are absolutely necessary to confect most of these Sacraments.
I thought of my dads observation as I read a piece by the ARCH-HERETIC - "Fr." Richard McBrien. (pic below)
How it can be possible that he is the Crowley-O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame escapes me. He wrote an article at the National catholic Reporter - bastion of neo modernism - lamenting the increasing trend of:
IMPORTING AFRICAN & ASIAN PRIESTS TO WORK AT PARISHES IN THE USA.
If you wish to see his piece it can be found at:
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/3178
Be forewarned that he is a dangerous man, and that the publication is itself a "cloaca maxima" for heresy and error.
This again related back to my parents home parish in Riverside County - where the two local churches are staffed by Holy Ghost Fathers - all either retired Anglo priests who had been missionaries, or young African priests.
I think that Fr. McBrien and his ilk are upset with these African and Asian priest for two reasons:
1.) Their importation lessens the "priest shortage crisis" they have been using to foist ecclesiological experimentation on unsuspecting parishioners.
Mc Brien suggests himself that rather than importing priests the Church should:
- (a) welcome back into the priesthood those priests who left to marry and might still be willing to serve as married priests;
- (b) drop the requirement of life-long, obligatory celibacy for its priests, thereby matching the discipline of the non-Roman Catholic churches of the East, which have had a married priesthood for centuries; and
- (c) open the ordained priesthood to women.
All ideas that have "gone nowhere" for thirty years, and will continue to go nowhere under the steady hand of Benedict XVI.
2.) In my experience these African import priests have been unbelievably faithful and hyper-orthodox. Not necessarily liturgically traditional, but doctrinally quite sound.
I am curious to hear from the readers of this blog what your experiences have been with "import" priests.
As both Fr. Mc Brien and the New York Times have written about the phenomena - I am hoping that it is widespread!
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