In February of the year 1961, the Vatican promulgated a document entitled, “Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Sacred Orders.”  The document concerned those who were considered fit to be ordained to the priesthood in the Catholic Church.  It included the following statement:

“Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.”

This document contains pure common sense.  It warns that a priest with sexual desires contrary to nature would place himself, by virtue of his priestly environment, in a near occasion of sin regarding other priests and those under his pastoral care – specifically, children and minors.  He would be a danger to himself and those around him.

As the sexual revolution and general social chaos of the 1960’s began to afflict the west – and especially America – the practical wisdom of the Church – of which this document was a piece – was retired for a new approach, one that was more open, tolerant, and sensitive towards sexual disorders.  Secularism surrounded and even entered the Church and began to form young impressionable minds in educational institutions with a view of reality that can only be described as atheistic.  This secular formation certainly influenced Catholic seminaries, so that even candidates for the priesthood began to think more like worldlings, rather than like men of God.   In addition, the discernment of candidates for the priesthood came to rely more and more on the judgments of psychologists.   To use a popular cliché, the perfect storm was forming against the Catholic Church and her priesthood, but it was hailed by many as a day of enlightenment.  In some areas, at least, the Catholic Church had come of age!  She was nearly “up to speed” with the modern world.

The fruit of this so-called enlightenment has now fallen from its trees, and it stinks to high heaven.  It is now everywhere in the Church – rotten, putrid, fly-infested, and reeking like manure on a hot summer afternoon in the country.  I refer, of course, to the sex scandals in the Church that simply will not go away because they cannot go away.  A thousand apologies from Pope Benedict XVI will not make them fade into the past because there is far more to it than sex scandals alone. 

The Catholic Church committed one gigantic blunder, one unpardonable sin that defies all common sense: that is, she ordained to the priesthood and promoted on all institutional levels sexual deviants.  And now – a thousand sex scandals later – she is paying the price for this blunder. And it is far from being over.  Her priesthood has been polluted with men whose many perverted deeds have now reduced the image of the Church of Jesus Christ to that of – pardon me – a prostitute that vainly tries on occasion to raise her voice on matters of morality and justice.

In the middle of this chaos, Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI – has done his utmost to remove the “filth” from the Church.  While prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he advanced the response to these scandals in 2001 by placing them under the Vatican Congregation that he headed.  As the American bishops traveled back and forth to Rome to discuss the American Church scandals, he was consistently the Vatican official most determined to confront the horrible facts and discipline the guilty.  When finally he was elected the 265th pope, he continued to address the scandals, meeting personally with victims of priest abuse, listening to their heart-rending stories, and even weeping with them.  Shortly after he was elected pope, the Vatican announced that the founder of the Legion of Christ, Marcial Maciel – who had been accused of numerous acts of sexual abuse against boys – was denied the right to function as a priest and forced to live a retired life of penance – all this even though the founder and the order itself continued to deny that any such abuse had occurred.  On and on I could go.  Pope Benedict XVI has been a fierce opponent of the sex abuse in the Catholic Church and a champion of the victims themselves.  I dare say that no person in the Church has done more than this man.

Nevertheless – demonstrating that no good deed goes unpunished in this world – the pope has become the preferred target of those who claim the Church has done far too little in addressing these scandals.  And as new revelations of unspeakable sexual deviancy on the part of European priests are now being broadcast far and wide in the media, all fists again are being raised and shaken at Pope Benedict.  Accusations are being made that perhaps thirty years ago he failed to respond to such accusations in an archdiocese of Germany where he was archbishop.  And although another prelate has taken full blame for this neglect – no matter; it’s Pope Benedict who is being charged and maligned, so much so that an effort is underway even to have him arrested for “crimes against humanity” when he visits England in September. 

What does the world want from a pope today?  Does it want a bold leader who will manfully confront these scandals and discipline the guilty?  Pope Benedict is such a man.

I find it pointedly ironic that the media presently having a field day attacking this pope, in truth, really does not object all that much to the dirty deeds performed by these deviant priests.  Yes, they object to forced dirty deeds, to the molestation of innocent children against their will.  Or at least, they object to it today.  But let me ask a question: would the news broadcasters, reporters, and journalists at, say, CNN, ABC, CBS, The New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC, would they still object to the behavior of these priests if only the element of force were removed, thus making the sexual relations between man and boy consensual?  From all indications, they would not.  After all, do not these media people, almost to a soul, promote all things perverted in their manner of reporting?  Are they not the promoters of sexual deviancy in general, of eliminating nearly every trace of sexual morality from the bedroom to the public square?  Are they not the enemies of traditional family life who are forever shoving the latest gay rights in our faces and telling us that if we don’t accept gay so-called marriage then it must be because we are homophobic hate mongers and cultural Neanderthals?  And, by means of their selective reporting and omnipresent opinions, are they not pressuring us to accept legal prostitution, incest, polygamy, polyandry, bisexuality, transexuality, and man-boy relations as perfectly acceptable and healthy life style choices?  Yes, thisis the media that wants to play the new inquisition and feign righteous anger when the guilty party happens to be the Catholic Church, but then, turn and promote immoral filth in broad daylight.  These are the people who fume with indignation at the sex scandals and insist that the pope should resign for allegedly being complicit.  And this is the media to which a priest of the diocese of Springfield, MA – Fr. James Scahill – has turned to express his opinion that Pope Benedict should resign.Predictably, he is once again the darling of the godless media, and they have broadcast his opinions literally from here to Europe and back.  Another case of, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Now any person who has listened to my radio program over the past few years knows that I am not a company-man, not a yes-man.  I have railed over these sex scandals as loudly as any one and been in favor of every guilty cleric being immediately removed from their position in the Church.  My consistent opinion has been: throw them out, every last guilty one of them.The Church has an all-important mission from Christ, and she cannot perform that mission so long as these demented individuals are in her ranks.  Throw them out!  But as I stated above, the real tragedy here is not the sex scandals alone, because these are only the latest rotten fruits of a larger problem.  The unpardonable sin in this case is that Church officials have ordained and promoted sexual deviants, and from this incomprehensible blunder has come the total chaos in the modern Church.  This is the politically incorrect, and thus, the unspoken truth of the issue.  Men unfit for the priestly ministry, unfit for living a moral life and preaching Catholic morality, are now in all levels of the Church.  To deny this is to live in a world of make-believe, for the evidence is overwhelming.
 
Father Scahill, the current priestly darling of the media, has called for the resignation of Pope Benedict the XVI, and the media are predictably celebrating his boldness in “speaking truth to power.”  But I have a few comments about this man.  For years now, lay Catholics have complained to me about him, saying that he teaches things contrary to the Catholic faith and is associated with groups known for their dissension from Catholic teaching.  This much belongs to the public record. 

I want to make one point regarding this priest.  Father Scahill has said regarding Pope Benedict, ”If he was unwilling to embrace the truth, then he should be willing to resign.”  He also said, “To deny the truth is to deny Christ.”  If this is the standard to which Father holds the pope – and rightly so – I’d like to hold the exact same standard to him: truth.

When a Catholic priest is ordained, he makes certain promises.  Before God Almighty and His people he solemnly promises to preach the Gospel and to teach the Catholic faith.  He promises also to celebrate faithfully and reverently, in accord with the Church’s tradition, the sacraments of the Church.  Notice that the promise made is not to preach his own version of the faith, but rather, the Church’s faith, the Gospel as faithfully passed down for two thousand years and proclaimed by the Church that is gracious enough, by the way, to ordain him.  Notice, also, that the promise made is to faithfully celebrate the sacraments – not to alter the prayers and rites of the Church so as to suit his own opinions and tastes or those of his friends.  To do so is to commit liturgical abuses condemned by the Second Vatican Council, and to deny to the faithful their right to receive the sacraments in strict accord with the Church’s official liturgical books.

Now let me ask this question: If Father has violated these solemn promises, if he has – to refer to his accusation towards the pope –  “been unwilling to embrace the truth,” then who should resign?  Only the pope should resign?  Quite a double standard.  If Fr. Scahill has been “unwilling to embrace the truth” contained in the solemn promises of his ordination, to teach the authentic Catholic faith – not his own version of it with additions and omissions – and to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass without liturgical abuses, then who should resign?

I am sick to death of liberal priests preaching platitudes, half-truths, and heresies in their homilies, slaughtering the sacraments of the Church with their shallow gimmicks and inspired “improvements,” and then posing as heroic sacrosanct reformers come to speak on behalf of the people.  I am sick to death of it!  These are the men who think they understand the problems in the Church, when, in fact, they are the problems in the Church.  Sex scandals or not, these men have drowned the faithful in moral and doctrinal relativism for forty years now, and when we lay people approach them with our concerns and objections to their antics, they arrogantly tell us to mind our own business or find another parish.  And if we show an unwillingness to cooperate with these antics, especially at Mass, they insist we obey them anyway, even as they disobey the Church that ordained them.  There is only one word for this: it is clericalism, the new clericalism of the liberal clergy. 

If Pope Benedict XVI should resign – and I firmly disagree that he should – then I demand the immediate resignation also of Fr. Scahill as well as every priest who has violated the solemn vows made at his ordination.  I call for the resignation of every single Catholic priest who has been unwilling to embrace the truth and teach the Catholic faith with all fidelity, or who has persisted in committing liturgical abuses. 

Who should resign?  Every one of these men, if they are truly  “priests of integrity,” should resign.  Let there be one standard applied to all the priests of the Catholic Church, from Pope Benedict XVI to Fr. James Scahill.  And let that standard be TRUTH.