113/227. My Book pp. 159-160. Post No. 1392. MY COMMENT : We never imagined that priests we know could be put in prison. We know that many priests were alcoholics, but had no idea that so many were pedophiles. It is hard to imagine that Bishops, aware of their priests’ crimes, contented themselves with buying the silence of their victims and tranfering the culprits to another parish. Some stains are indelible. ********************* Napoleon Bonaparte, after his Waterloo, was exiled to Saint Helena, the British island-prison in the Southern Atlantic. Dr Barry Edward O’Meara, his Irish personal ..read more

112/227. My Book p. 159. Post No. 1391. MY COMMENT : A mini-reflection on my decision to abandon not only the priesthood but religious faith itself. ********************** Many misunderstand the expression, but when Hamlet, “to the manner (of Danish drunken revelry) born”, voiced his objection to the practice as “more honor’d in the breach than the observance”, he meant that it is sometimes more honorable to break with traditional practices than to observe them. My decision to abandon not only the Franciscan Order and the priesthood, but Catholic belief and practice, was, I believe, as honorab ..read more

111/227. My Book pp. 158-159. Post No. 1390. MY COMMENT : The story of Salieri’s confession made me think of my own experience as a confessor. I find now not only the credulity of my penitents, but my own as their vehicle of God’s forgiveness, embarrassingly over the top. ********************* During my seven years as a priest, I heard many confessions. I never heard one like Salieri’s. I, like the confessor in the movie, was a young, inexperienced, naïve priest, with no experience of the real world, having been kept out of it since the age of sixteen. Now, ten years later (at time of writing ..read more

110/227. My Book p. 158. Post No. 1389. MY COMMENT : This is about a movie which tells the very human story of a Pentecostal preacher whose personal conviction developed into total intolerance of anyone daring to question the faith. ********************** The vast majority of priests, pastors, preachers and even some televangelists are not psychotic, pedophiliac, crazy, deranged or dangerous. They are, for the most part, respectable men and women, sane, sincere, dedicated, true believers in what they say and preach. Robert Duvall’s 1997 movie, “The Apostle”, which he directed and in which he s ..read more

109/227. My Book pp. 156-158. Post No. 1388. MY COMMENT : Compared with its past history, the Catholic Church neither enjoys its former power and prestige nor suffers the prejudice and persecution it once knew. The world is today largely indifferent to the Church, its aging clergy and diminishing congregations. Priests are no longer revered shepherds of their flocks but often ignored relics of a past age. They are misfits, victims of the credulity that once attracted them to the priesthood. They deserve our pity rather than scorn. We should not shoot at ambulances. ************************** T ..read more

108/227. My Book pp. 154-156. Post No. 1387. MY COMMENT : An open letter to my contemporaries still stuck in the priesthood. They deserve our pity. I checked in my chasuble at age 31. They are all too old to do that now. They have become totally dependent on the Church they served and continue to serve. Can they admit, at least to themselves, that they should have done what I did ? Even if they do, they are prisoners of their pusillanimity. It would be cruel of us to put salt into their open sore, and unpardonable of me to gloat. ************************** Dear Reverend Father, You have been w ..read more

107/227. My Book pp. 153-154. Post No. 1386. MY COMMENT : Foreseeing the future is largely guesswork. Our track-record has been far from accurate. Few pundits foresaw how quickly after Vatican 2 the Catholic Church seemed to contract a terminal illness. This has created an existential challenge for its aging clergy. ********************* Futurology has to be the most inexact of the inexact sciences. I saw a documentary once, made about the time I was born (1937). It purported to reveal what the world would be like ages later, in . . . 1960 ! (Predictions are safest when there is at least a twe ..read more

106/227. My Book pp. 152-153. Post No. 1385. MY COMMENT : Many defrocked priests retain and continue to practise their faith. I did, for a full ten years, before honesty compelled me to recognize the illusions of religious credulity and to dedicate my life to sharing the illumination of atheism. ********************* I heard the question in 1968. How could I dare betray my vocation ? How could I dare renounce my vows ? How could I dare bring shame on my family, friends, confreres and the “faithful” whom I had served as a priest for seven years ? Some well-meaning believers thought to destabili ..read more

CABBAGES, KINGS AND CLERICAL HOMOSEXUALITY 105/227. My Book pp. 151-152. Post No. 1384. MY COMMENT : The principal Christian churches, Catholicism and Anglicanism, spend an inordinate amount of time discussing homosexuality and notably that of their own clergy, rather than sensitizing their flocks to the ecological, economic and existential challenges facing mankind. ******************* Among the vast number of subjects of mind-boggling unimportance reported in the Press, surely the debate raging in the Anglican Church about homosexual priests and bishops – the cover-story in TIME, June 18, 20 ..read more

104/227. My Book pp. 148-149. Post No. 1383. MY COMMENT : The imposed celibacy of the Catholic clergy is a permanent reminder of the Church’s hang-up with sex. *********************** No, there never was a pregnant Pope. Hyper-sexed Popes, yes. Their progeny is a minor scandal in what, after all, is a very human institution. The problem with sex in the Vatican is rather at the level of doctrine and dogma. Official clerical celibacy, a late invention, was no doubt reinforced by the doctrine of Saint Augustine and the subsequent anti-sexual prejudices of theologians. After twenty centuries, Rome ..read more