Assuming that advancing the agenda of the Lavender Mafia is the highest priority of the Pope explains a great deal about this kidney stone of a pontificate.
PopeWatch: Lavender Mafia Strikes Again
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Too bad for Phoenix diocese: Olmsted had laboriously cleaned up the Augean stables of the late Bp. [felony homicide hit-run] Thomas O’Brien, a disaster of elephantine episcopal proportions with a long history of incardinating wayward priests. O’Brien was the greatest effective recruiter of Catholics to the SSPX and the CMRI split off traditionalist churches in the diocese.
Now Phoenix diocese to backslide again to hell..
A picture is worth a thousand words. His tells me that alpha males need not apply. And they wonder why men have left the Church in droves. The average bishop isn’t a father because he rejects fatherhood.
“..tells me that alpha males need not apply. And they wonder why men have left the Church in droves. The average bishop isn’t a father because he rejects fatherhood.”
It’s been that way for years.
Even if clergy are not homosexual there’s a strong inclination in the hive not to accept or promote anyone masculine, a father… They’re perceived as “rigid”.
Then there’s the group that in order to be ordained “don’t say anything”. They’ll say they’ll say something once ordained, but the habit of “not saying anything” persists afterwards. Especially when it’s realized that a bishop has total control over your future and especially if you don’t have any employable skills in society. You hunker down and “do the best you can where you are and don’t say anything”.
Then there’s the adage:
A players hire A players… D players hire D players.
Gay players hire gay players. Soft players hire soft players.
When is the last time you received a firm handshake from a priest or deacon?
Then there’s the occupational drift from the common man or woman:
A priest is likely to have done no manual labor, not mixed with carpenters and construction workers, he’s bookish, soft hands, soft spoken, he identifies more with an elitist who went to a “good” school (maybe even a Nancy Pelosi), then Joe the Plumber.
This is all pretty recent. Back in the Sixties a lot of priests were veterans of World War II, many combat veterans. Most of them were from large families, and usually blue collar families.
Yes, it is fairly recent.
I think it’s driven primary by catholic schools, specifically catholic high schools. The idea that someone attending a catholic high school today in hopes of being a carpenter, is taken to be nonsensical. (Carpenters are losers.)
High school years are formative years, when only a certain class of people receive a high school education in theology that is generally the pool of people who may choose a clerical life.
It all depends on the person and his background and upbringing. They need to vet those entering the priesthood and look for strong characters with integrity. And really test if they are cut out for the priesthood. After all it is a vocation and and it’s not for the faint of heart.
The good ones are most likely to be moved on when they disagree with their superiors. Which leaves the yielding ones easy to manage.
We are currently, in my parish in the San Diego diocese, praying a “Prayer for Vocations” before Mass. It says. In part, “choose from our homes, our schools, and our colleges…” While it is necessary that priests be educated, that by no means denies a true calling to some kid (or even older) working, after high school, at the local deli counter, laying asphalt, or any other “dirty” job. Might even be a fisherman or two in the group. I have taken to adding “and places of work” to the prayer.
Vocations can be miracles, but normally…
A young man goes fishing, decides on a fishing career…
Another learns STEM in high school, decides on a career in engineering…
…
Another learns catholic theology and decides on a priestly vocation..
– pool is only those who attend catholic H$ and/or are homeschooled…
– everyone else has no more than an eighth grade education (at best). I don’t know any engineers who decided on a career in eng based on eight grade math.
Reminds me of the old joke of looking for lost keys only under street lights.
Outspoken, pro-life Fr. William Kosco of St Henry Parish, Buckeye AZ has openly criticized pro-abort politicians like Joe Biden receiving Communion. His videos on a variety of subjects are worth the read. St Henry is a working class parish and his parishioners love him. I hope the new bishop of Phoenix won’t silence him.
Vocations can be miracles, but normally…
About 96% of the manpower in American secondary schooling is devoted to half-assed liberal education or to some sort of remedial education (half-assed babysitting in core city schools). VoTech accounts for about 4% of the teaching staff at that level, about 0% at the primary level. A comfortable majority take math and science courses in high school.
Engineers account for 1.2% of the working population. IT employees about 3%. Scientists outside of higher education, 0.4%. Technicians assisting such people, 0.4%. People in mathematical occupations < 0.2%. Post-secondary teachers in STEM, < 0.2%. Clinical laboratory technicians, 0.2% (People who earn a living from fishing are so few the federal surveyors do not have a separate taxon for them).
Imagine a world in which math and science were only taught in very expensive private high schools, there would be very very few scientists and engineers.
That’s where we are with catholic theology and the priesthood.
If you look at the pontiff’s moral theology as a project whose endgame is to make gay clerics feel better about themselves, it all makes sense.
That’s where we are with catholic theology and the priesthood.
No it isn’t where you are, because you have the alternatives of homeschooling and CCD programs.
Art, I’m sorry to tell you, but CCD has bit the wax tadpole for at least three generations, now.
My very geeky husband spent about half of the time he was doing confirmation class in teaching basic catechism, to kids who supposedly passed the first half of the two-year system.
Among the things he taught was, “ok, this is a Catechism, and here is how it works.” (Including “look at the footnotes, that tells you what level of authority the specific statement has.”)
The who-became-priests thing seems to be very regional, in Oregon when mom was a kid, the priests were all guys who’d gone into Seminary to avoid the draft for WWII, or guys who were in too bad of health to draft.
Mom got driven out of doing CCD classes by a Spirit Of Vatican II priest who demanded she teach that fornication was fine if you “really loved” the other person.
Art, I’m sorry to tell you, but CCD has bit the wax tadpole for at least three generations, now.
No doubt. Very little is done well in parish life. Catholic schools are not an alternative. They’re expensive, they’re commonly run by ordinary NGO employees, and the clientele consist of people who would never take instruction from a clergyman no matter how conscientious and well-schooled he was.
Personally, I’m not persuaded that Catholic schools or CCD are crucial in generating vocations. The vocations I’ve seen most recently came out of large families.