Word: priestly
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...scorned its structures, I stayed. Even as I discovered that I was homosexual, I couldn't leave. I knew somewhere deep in my soul that God was real, that his church was essential, that the Gospels were true, that the sacraments were indispensable. I couldn't address a priest except as Father, leaving all my usual orneriness aside, when I saw the collar. Although the gulf grew between my life and the institutional church I still attended, it never occurred to me that I was no longer a Catholic. I was a sinner--that much I knew. But the church...
...surprise that we are hardly flocking to them. Annual vocations to the priesthood in America have halved in the last few decades from around 1,000 in 1965 to around 500 today. As the priesthood has become older, it has also become sparser: there were just under 59,000 priests in 1965, and there are only 45,000 today. In 1972, 49% of Catholics reported attending church weekly; in 2000, a mere 26% did. The number of men and women entering religious orders, primarily as nuns or monks, has also collapsed--by well over half since 1965. The number...
...conversation goes both ways, of course. Many of us in the church have found it extremely difficult to engage in real conversations with our priests and bishops about these matters. We are too deferential or embarrassed. After Mass on Sundays, I can recall having animated conversations with fellow parishioners about these issues, but then, when we leave the place and shake hands with the pastor, we find it hard to say anything but "God bless you, Father." But as lay people, we can increase lay involvement in church affairs. We can tell our priests and our fellow parishioners what...
Those who say the church can never change are simply wrong. It has always been pragmatic about the nonessentials, accommodating itself to new cultures, to old customs and to social change. It once conducted Masses solely in Latin; now it doesn't. Communion was once dispensed solely by the priest; now lay people can distribute it. Even some of the deepest and oldest rituals in Catholic life--like the Easter Vigil ceremony--were imported in part from pagan rituals. In Africa and Asia, all kinds of cultural accommodations are made to bring the faith across cultures and into people...
...freaking, says Georgetown Prep's dean of students, Jeff Jones: "Our policy is, if they wouldn't do it in front of their parents or their priest, then they wouldn't do it here." But then again, weren't their parents doing the bump...