Thursday, December 27, 2018

Synergistic solutions for a damaged Church

Several good Bishops have a bad problem- generations of abuse and homosexuality in the seminaries have devastated the population of priests.  There is hope for the future- these Bishops who are willing to embrace transparency and action on abuse cases are rewarded with an increase (sometimes a miraculous increase)  in vocations; however, the demographic hole still exists.

Due to this, many rural populations find themselves with either a closed parish or a circuit riding priest, there not being enough priests left to provide pastors for every situation.

At the same time, bad bishops, in a misguided attempt to stem the tide of ridiculously large scandals, are turning to punishing whistleblowers who dare to preach against sexuality in the priesthood (after all, only 80% of the problem is homosexuality, the rest are heterosexuals with "Secret Families"), and if they do, they are quickly removed from being pastors and either have to run for their lives or get sentenced to lives of prayer and penance in the church's equivalent of insane asylums.

Since rural populations are often far more conservative than urban populations, I suggest that an obvious solution exists.  Good Bishops on the west side of the Rockies and in the North, should accept, with some investigation, priests that cannot, for whatever reason, obtain a letter of credentials from their former bishops.  These priests should be given parishes in remote small communities, where they are likely to not only find support from parishioners, but are given a real chance at service.


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Oustside The Asylum by Ted Seeber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://outsidetheaustisticasylum.blogspot.com.