Why We Need To See Some Anger From The Priests

Preface: This is kind of a weird post for me. I'm not sure I want to see anything come of it. It arose from wife kitteh and I discussing what bothers us about the lack of anger from the pulpit. Take it for what it's worth.

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I loves me some Father Mike Schmitz. His homilies on YouTube are always cheerful and fun and upbeat. He got serious this time when he dealt with the latest sex scandal revelations. He chokes back his anger a number of times and he mentions how parishioners have repeatedly asked him if he's angry about it. He doesn't express his anger except in body language. He talks about how the scandal has affected him and how he gets "child molester" comments in public.

I'm really sorry for that, amigo, but you're missing the point from the laity. I think that almost all priests are missing the point.

We're your infantry. We're the ones who are surrounded by opposition 24/7. We don't live in a rectory and we don't work with Catholics. At school, at work, in social settings, we're surrounded by protestants, agnostics and atheists. We're the front lines, not you.

The Church leadership fed us to the machine guns to no purpose. Your troops went over the top and got shot to pieces for nothing. We tithed and volunteered and attended Mass and sent our kids to Catholic schools and defended the Catechism in public and contributed to the Church Building Fund when you asked. After all that, you threw our lives away.

We didn't mind fighting abortion and taking the hits for that. Most of us didn't mind fighting for traditional marriage and taking the hits for that. This was different. This was simply charging across no-man's land to get ripped to shreds for nothing at all.

I know you didn't do it. I get that many of you didn't know. I get that you're horrified, but your sermons are being given to the shell-shocked survivors of the slaughter. We've argued with our coworkers, we've struggled to keep our children in the faith, we kept contributing to the Church Building Fund and this is what we get.

"We're all sinners. This is a reminder that we are all fallen and need God's grace."

"We need to forgive."

"This is an opportunity to show mercy."

From the Pope, we get anodyne, wimpy letters of ... I have no idea what that thing was, actually. Yesterday, from Church leadership, we got this.

Statement by Bishop William Crean announcing the decision of the Bishops’ Conference to divest from fossil fuels https://t.co/4O238zAi18 @trocaire pic.twitter.com/sP4Lovd1Ss

— CatholicBishops (@CatholicBishops) August 24, 2018

So there we are in the pews. We've just faced another week of machine gun fire and shelling, almost all of it inflicted by our own leadership for their gratification. You don't want to show anger and the bishops are adopting yet another far-left political stance.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, when you don't show anger, I feel all alone, as if our lives can be spent like water in pursuit of whatever the latest fad might be or maybe in pursuit of nothing at all.