Pedophile Priests are Just A Symptom

of the Crisis in the Church.

http://www.courageouspriest.com/pedophile-priests-are-just-a-symptom-of-the-crisis-in-the-church

Yes Perverts are Just A Symptom!

The Cancer is that There is No Real Belief
In the Supernatural!
Father Dwight Longenecker-What’s the real cancer at the heart of the church? Not pedophile priests…they’re a symptom of a
much deeper problem. Gerald Warner at the Daily Telegraph let’s fly in this article about the real problem underlying the child
abuse scandals. I think he’s on target in much of what he says.

The secular press are fond of saying that the child abuse problem is caused by the demand for priestly celibacy. There is an
underlying cause, but it’s not that. The underlying cause is that too many Catholics have lost the plot completely. For the last
forty years the church has been infected with modernism, and the key tenet of modernism is that there is no such
thing as the supernatural. What you see is what you get.

This serious sickness at the very heart of the church swept through monasteries, convents and seminaries. The honest priests, nuns
and religious lost their faith and got out. The lazy ones stayed put and enjoyed a meal ticket for life. No longer believing in the
reality and power of the sacraments, they drifted into a no man’s land in which they were priests, bishops and
religious without believing in religion. What were they supposed to do? They decided to re-create the church as a kind of
dining club with a social conscience.

When it came to sexuality, well since the invention of the pill, everyone else was playing around with whoever they wanted.
The apostate priests had no reason to insist on such an outmoded thing as chastity, and if no one else had to be chaste, why
should they? If they no longer had to believe in heaven or hell (you make your own heaven or hell here on earth don’t
you know?) then there was no real penalty if your sexual tastes were, errm, unconventional. Homosexuality was
presented as natural, and sex wasn’t for procreation, and everybody was sexually active, so why not play around with whoever you
liked?

A therapeutic culture swept in and suddenly nobody was a sinner. “I’m OK. You’re OK.” You don’t need punishment or
banishment. You don’t even need forgiveness and a demand for reparation. You need therapy. No wonder they covered up. In their
anthropology no one was a sinner. No one was bad. They were just wounded. They were just sick. They needed help.

G.K.Chesterton said that “Every argument is a theological argument.” and it is always and everywhere true that a moral crisis is
linked with a theological crisis. Benedict XVI’s letter to the Irish church rightly calls for a spiritual and liturgical and theological
renewal. The pedophile priest crisis is not just a crisis of morals, but a crisis of belief.

Finally, this crisis of belief is not just a crisis among a few twisted and evil perverts. It is a crisis of belief in our whole
church. Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Mother Superiors, Seminary Rectors, Theologians, Priests and people have all been
swamped with something other than the red blooded Catholic faith of our Fathers. They’ve been tromping along like drug
addled zombies following a feel good false religion that has been used to deceive millions.

We all need repentance in the face of this. We all need to turn again to the awareness that the devil is real, that sin is
real, that nice people are capable of terrible evil. We must be on our guard. We must believe in the power and reality of the
sacraments. We must be New Testament Christians with missionary zeal, the discipline of ascetical prayer and a warrior spirit.

Nothing else will do.