Everyday now, ordinary Catholics are sadly telling me about their tyrannical, faithless and prayerless priests.
I am 68 now and I have always seen the priesthood as a vocation, a call from God.
In that sense, it’s not and should not be regarded as a career, profession or job.
When I was ordained at 24 I was clueless about what it was like out there in the clerical world. I thought all priests believed. I thought all priests prayed. And I thought that all priests were 24 hour servants of their parishioners.
That’s what I was taught to believe.
When I was 24 my first parish priest was a tyrant, a hater of the Irish, an alcoholic and a totally disillusioned bully.
The presbytery was a dark, sad, depressing and life destroying place. And I lived there with him and HIS housekeeper and they hated the sight of me.
In my second parish both the parish priest and the housekeeper were alcoholics and sex partners.
I did all the parish work, sobered them up with coffee every morning and did all the cooking and cleaning. Everything was ok until the PP went on holidays and she fell out with me one night in a drunken rage. When he arrived back the PP obviously had to take her side and I took the blame.
My third parish priest was worse than the first and we did not last long.
What I soon discovered was that I was expected to do the wishes of the PP or the bishop – even when it went against God’s will.
One example – one of my PP’s had a rule that all wedding Masses should start on time even if the bride was not present!
The bride was to be ignored when she arrived and be given a quickie wedding when Mass was over!
I refused to process like this. God would not have wanted a young couple treated like that on the most important day of their life.
Would Jesus have done that to the couple at Cana? Of course not!
As a result I was designated disobedient, a trouble maker and a disturbed.
CYNICISM
The cancer of cynicism had invaded many of the priests I met in my early days.
Many of them lived for money, gambling, drinking, sex etc.
They prophesised I would become like them.
THE MONASTERIES
We have seen recently on the blog the state the monasteried are in – Mount Mellerary, Silverstream, Roscrea and Glenstal.
These places used to hot houses of faith and prayer.
Now they are hot houses if homosexuality and God knows what else.
As I say: “If the Cistercians are AT IT, the show is over” !!!
TODAY
Today, most priests are gay – the Boilerhouse, promiscuous types of gay.
Many of them have no real faith.
Many of them don’t pray.
They are materialistic.
They like dressing up in lace and brocade.
They see people at “surgery hours”.
They see the cleric as superior and laity as the lowest form of church life.
They lick episcopal arse with a driveness.
The priesthood is currently in one of the greatest crises it’s even been in.
And it seems no one cares and no one is willing to anything.
We need a new reformation and a new spiritual renewal.
It will not be solved by meetings, reports, mission statements and pastoral plans.
It will be solved when people truly believe again and truly pray.
In fact we probably need to tear the whole thing down and start again from scratch – Jesusc and the New Testament church
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 