Word: priestly
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Where were the nuns? This is what I keep wondering as priest after priest is accused of sexual misconduct. After all, the nuns were everywhere in our parish school, acting as mother hens, camp counselors, choirmasters and coaches, mysteriously able to see all, despite those white coifs blocking their peripheral vision. Without families and with no teachers' union, the sisters spent every waking moment with us, running an after-school program of word games, field hockey and making statues of the saints out of plaster of Paris...
IRELAND The State Steps In The Dublin government ordered a state enquiry into the activities of a Catholic priest, Father Sean Fortune, who committed suicide in 1999 facing sex-abuse charges. The decision follows the resignation of Fortune's bishop, Brendan Comiskey, who recently admitted that he had not done enough to protect children in his diocese...
...walking down the rectory hallway--I don't think I'd been there even a month--and I peered into a mirror. I had my collar on. As I looked, I said to myself, "You're the same as you were a month ago, except now you're a priest." And that was a really big moment, a profound moment. It was trouble...
What would bring it on? I don't know, maybe fatigue, maybe stress. But I know that I worked seven days a week, 16 hours a day, as a priest. I didn't take a day off. But I was very good. That's how I got my identity. That's how I got my fulfillment. I was a good priest who did amazing things, but I didn't have a personal life. Among my many priestly activities, I worked closely with children. My reaching out to them was not to harm them. I was reaching out for affection...
...confession; there would be genuine repentance; and then I would go for a period of time without molesting anyone. I would make a very real point when this was having to be confessed to go to another diocese to make sure the priest didn't know me. What I was after was the absolution, so that I could pick up the pieces and go on. I didn't see the big picture that I certainly...