www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Attacks on the Roman Catholic Priesthood!!!

I don't know how everyone else thinks about this issue, but I think that this child abuse by Priests has gone too far with the media!!! Yes, it is extremely sad that some Priests have committed child abuse. These Priests have made the entire Priesthood look bad!!! That's not the case!!! Yes, there is child abuse by Priests. There is also Priest abuse by the media!!! If I had my 15 minutes of fame, I would say the following: " BE CHARITABLE TO THE PRIESTHOOD!!! PRAY FOR THE PRIESTHOOD!!! YES, THESE PRIESTS WHO COMMITTED CHILD ABUSE DID DO EVIL!!! HOWEVER, DO NOT CONDEMN THE PRIESTHOOD BECAUSE OF THE MORTAL SINS OF THE VERY FEW PRIESTS SUCH AS THESE!!! EACH PRIEST REPRESENTS JESUS IN THE GODHEAD AT THE FOOT OF THE ALTAR NO MATTER WHAT THEIR ACTIONS MAY BE!!! RATHER, BE CHARITABLE TO THEM AND PRAY FOR THEM!!! STOP CONDEMNING THE PRIESTHOOD, O MEDIA!!!" Now, what I have just said, I am not defending the Priests who have done evil---I am defending those who are good and, because of the chaos in the Church, look bad. It's time that somebody comes forth and stands up for the Priesthood in all of this!!! This has destroyed the entire Priesthood and there are many, many good Priests!!! We must defend them because they represent Jesus and there lives are lives of prayer and pennance!!!

Benedicat tu Deus!!!

Dear Ave Maria,

Welcome to our Parish !!

I have this feeling that you are' preaching to the converted' here. This has been discussed on many occasions here and I don't think I'm wrong when I say that we all realise that our clergy need our support and prayers.

Unfortunately the Press has this idea that the clergy should not be human - I mean that they think they should be above human things - but we know this to be untrue - they are human like us and have failings like us and indeed sin like us. We all fall and, by the Grace of God , pick ourselves up and try harder , but some are more successful than others.

Anhelyna

This is a Byzantine forum...not a Roman Catholic one. So therefore...I really don't care about the problems that RC face with priests. That's their problem, not ours. We have our own problems to deal with.

Bendictus what? Is that Latin or what? We don't speak Latin here.

Sorry to hear about your frustration, but franky I really don't care at all. I have many RC friends leaving the Church because of priests problems (not necessarily sex abuse at all)...so the priests brought them all upon themselves.

You don't need to yell at us about it...you yell at the RC about it.

I'm sorry if I come across very "cold" about it, it's just that I'm tired of hearing and dealing with people who come up to me and taking it out on me about RC problems. SO....I hope you find some peace.

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

Ummm ... excuse me please, you are right that this is a BYZANTINE forum, not a ROMAN one, but I thought we were all Catholics?? Does that and the fact that we all name the Holy Father in our liturgies count for anything??

Dear SPDundas,

I can relate to your frustration with the tone of the Ave Maria's post, but to be fair - I don't think it is kind, or even accurate, to label clerical sexual abuse a "RC problem."

There are many religious denominations that are slowly facing up to the reality that this kind of despicable evil can happen within their fold. I know of at least one case involving a Ukrainian Catholic priest and there is a whole website documenting occurences in the Orthodox churches. Not to mention scandals in various Protestant churches.

So while not as widely reported by the media as the incidents in Boston et. al. it just not fair to oversimplify and deem this a problem in the Roman Catholic Church alone.

PAX

In Latin we say "benedicat te omnipotens Deus" not "benedicat tu Deus". SPDundas said that we do not speak Latin here, SPDunds pobably ignores that Latin had also a place at the Byzantine Liturgy. That was during the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom in Sunday Easter. During the liturgy the Gospel was proclaimed both in Greek and Latin by the patriarch and the archdeacon. If I am not wrong during the Vespers of Easter Sunday in many Greek parishes they read the Gospel in Latin inmediately after Greek. Them they do the same in many other languages...do not forget that Latin was the language of Rome and that Constantinople is the New Rome. Latin was the official language of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire till Emperor Heraclius (7th century).
Ειρήνη πάσι
Dominus sit semper vobiscum.

Dear Friends,

We Eastern Catholics too have our abusive priests, as do other denominations.

We support our Latin brothers in this time of crisis and truly the liberal press is taking this opportunity to bash ALL religious belief and ALL Churches using this. So it truly is our common business.

On the other hand, comments by spdundas should be seen in light of years of Latin preaching to our Eastern Churches about the ills of a married priesthood and even preventing our Churches from having our historic married priesthood.

The Eastern Church, as with everything else, has a different perspective here as well.

Traditionally, the Eastern Churches won't ordain unmarried men to serve as parish priests!

Unmarried men go to monasteries, including when a parish priest's wife dies - although "parish monks" are now a possibility.

Could it be that the Eastern Churches have a healthier attitude toward this whole issue that results in a much lesser incidence of abuse etc.?

But for me the issue here is NOT primarily the fact of abusive priests.

The issue here is really about BISHOPS who kept transferring such to other parishes, thereby exposing the faithful and their children to further danger and abuse.

THAT truly is the issue!

Alex

Wow. What a warm and charitable post. I guess that as long as your tight-knit little Byzantine community is OK, to hell with your Roman brothers and sisters.

Columcille

Amen!!!!!

We need more Republican Priest.

Well well well, your sarcasm certainly have some warmness to it, huh?

How about this, we've got some RC coming to our Divine Liturgy and have to hear them say "what a WEIRD Mass." Some of them have been very uncharitable to us "we shouldn't be doing that..that's wrong...etc." Some of them have been disrespectful by doing the "Latin way" at our Divine Liturgy like praying the Rosary DURING Divine Liturgy, kneeling the WHOLE TIME. Another example would be one time there were few people there kneeling during Paschal Divine Liturgy (note: kneeling is FORBIDDEN during 40 days after Pascha), one time to a point where my priest asked me (I'm the server) to go out there in the middle of Divine Liturgy and ask these people to stand up and they were making such hussy fussy about it & rolling their eyes, etc. How's that for RC charity? They are the GUESTS for Pete's sake! Our Divine Liturgy is absolutely BEAUTIFUL...very Orthodox...such an awe! And yet I get to hear some GRIPES from RCs.

And NOW, here in the Cyber Byzantine Land (this forum), we have some RC come in and gripe about their RC problems and scandals that we have absolutely NOTHING to do with. Why is that? If one knows the history on the forum of past RC posters have stirred controversy and trouble here on the forum to a point where sometimes the administrators have had to remind them that this is the "BYZANTINE" and "EASTERN CATHOLIC" forum, and they respectfully asked the RC not to bring about the troubles or controversy on the forum.

You have to understand why I get so defensive at times. I'm trying my best to protect the Byzantine and Eastern Catholic heritage from "attacks" from RC and from RC RHETORIC such as THIS POST.

There is NO ill blood in me against RC at all. I do not hate RC and I do not feel bad for them. I'm just simply indifferent of RC problems that they brought upon themselves and we didn't bring it upon them or anything. We have nothing to do with their problems. We have our own problems to worry about. That's what I'm trying to say. So, Columcille, why do you feel the need to be sarcastic with me? Do you not empathize me and many other forum members who feel the need to be on the defensive mode?

Now that's my simple 2 cent here. Perhaps we should ask the administrator to lock this post as to avoid any more arguments, as the history of RC posts are doomed to be repeated here. Thank you.

I also ask for any pardon for any offenses that I may have done. And I forgive those who care less about the Byzantine (and Eastern) Churches on this forum.

Thank you.

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

Maybe next time, I'll do better, by saying nothing at all? My goodness, that's hard to do. But with Great Lent coming up faster than we can catch our breath, perhaps it can be my "Lenten duty?"

BTW, Yes, I do agree that the media take delight on picking on the RC priests and that's wrong.

But what can we do? This is America...where we have the freedom of speech.

So just as long as the priests commit scandal and bishops committing scandal, there's no stopping the media.

All Catholics have the moral responsibility to ensure the Church is absolutely free from scandals, heresy, apostasy, etc.

So that's why I shrug my shoulders and say "Well...we can't grip about the media when it's the RC who brought it upon themselves." Do you know what I mean?

If we don't want the media attacking us then you gotta make the effort to make serious reforms in the priesthood (in the RC) like allowing married men to be ordained to priesthood or whatever it takes to avoid scandals.

I try to remind my friends at work, etc. that I'm a BYZANTINE Catholic, so my Church have nothing to do with the scandal...because I am extremely embarrassed for RC brothers and sisters! Very embarrassed! I'm sorry that you RCs have so many problems that you guys don't seem to know how to handle. I shall hope and pray that everybody can learn from this and I know in my heart it will lead RC (as well as all other Catholic Churches) to holiness, perfection and be full of G-d's glory.

I even my gay coworker a piece of my mind (when he was picking on the RC) that the scandal is indeed a blessing in disguise...because then we are awaken by it and we will WEED out all gay priests OUT, and during that it will help make RC much better and holier Church. He was stunned.

SPDundas

I for one am very offended by your tone and your comments. Perhpas if you spent more time on your knees, or praying the roasary, btw the roasary is prayed by mnay in the Romanian tradition, you would not be such a nasty person.

It seems to me that it is people like you, who tell people to stop kneeling, is the reason peple run out of our churches. Maybe, just maybe, the liturgy would be invalid because they were kneeling. Maybe when Jesus was kneeling in the garden praying God could not hear him.

I think that the "RC's" have more of a place here then you do and I for one would be happy if you just took yourself and left. I am going to go and kneel down and say a rosary for you. But I am sure you think it wont work.

Christians just don't act this way!!!

Br. Peter

Dear Spdundas,

Believe me if I tell you that, although a Latin Catholic, I understand pretty well your frustation, it is probably the same frustration I fell when some of my Latin Catholic "friends" call me "heretic" or "traitor" just because I attend Holy Liturgy at an Byzantine rite Catholic parish or when some of our Eastern Catholic brothers betray the Byzantine traditions to adopt the Latins ones (some of them really love latinization).

Yours in Christ
F

Dear Br. Peter M. Preble,

Taking into account that you are a seminary student of the Eparchy of Saint George in Canton, may I ask you a question which has no direct relationship with this topic: How do Romanian (Greek)Catholics celebrate baptism? Some of the pictures of the the web site of Anunciation Byzantine Romanian Mission shows that inmersion was not used at the baptisms of at least 3 childrem at that mission. Is that the general rule at the Eparchy?

Yours in christ

F